To investigate the physical and mental health of trainees receiving standardized residency training of anesthesiology in four large teaching hospitals in Wuhan, China, as well as related risk factors.

The trainees who received standardized residency training of anesthesiology in four large general teaching hospitals in Wuhan were selected as subjects, and Symptom Checklist-90 (SCL-90) and Eysenck Personality Questionnaire were used to investigate mental health and personality state. SPSS 22.0 was used to perform the independent samples t-test, a one-way analysis of variance, and the chi-square test, and Logistic regression was used to analyze the influencing factors for SCL-90.

A total of 328 questionnaires were distributed and 326 valid questionnaires were collected, with a recovery rate of 99.39%. Among these trainees, 68 (20.86%) were found to have abnormal mental status (SCL-90 score >160), with a relatively high proportion of the trainees with obsessive-compulsive symptoms or depression. The trainees with abnormal mental status showed the personality characteristics of tendency neuroticism and tendency psychoticism, and compared with the trainees with normal mental status, the trainees with abnormal mental status showed a higher proportion of trainees with abnormal personality characteristics. The univariate analysis showed that the grade of residency training, scientific research pressure, monthly on-duty frequency, and personality characteristics were associated with abnormal mental status, and the multivariate analysis showed that a monthly on-duty frequency of >5 times (B=0.997, odds ratio [OR]=2.709, 95%CI: 1.051-6.986, P=0.039), great pressure of scientific research (B=3.235, OR=25.412, 95%CI: 3.239-199.363, P=0.002), emotional instability (B=2.015, OR=7.504, 95%CI: 3.529-15.954, P<0.001), and psychosomatic abnormalities (B=1.640, OR=5.154, 95%CI: 2.510-10.581, P<0.001) were risk factors for psychological abnormality in trainees, while extroversion personality (B=-2.758, OR=0.063, 95%CI: 0.019-0.215, P<0.001) was a protective factor against abnormal mental status.

The positive rate of psychological abnormality is 20.86% among trainees receiving standardized residency training of anesthesiology in four large teaching hospitals in Wuhan, and possible influencing factors include monthly on-duty frequency, scientific research pressure, work pressure, and different personality characteristics.

Mental health; Symptom checklist-90; Eysenck personality questionnaire; Standardized residency training of anesthesiology