Stress in medical practice has always been a topical issue. This is partly because medical service involves taking care of other peoples’ lives and mistakes or errors could be costly and sometimes irreversible. It is thus expected that the medical doctor himself must be in a perfect state of mind devoid of morbid worries and anxieties. This is however not usually the case, because the doctor apart from being affected by the same variables that impose stress on the general population, is also prone to stress because of the peculiarities of his work situation and the expectation of the society at large.

We have conducted an extensive research to determine the level of stress load and occurrence of burnout syndrome between Czech medical doctors comparing to general professions. Group of medical doctor (n = 500) was compared to group of on medical professions (n = 500) using questionnaires for evaluation of stress load and burnout syndrome.

The results of the study confirmed that occurrence of high stress load and burnout syndrome is substantially higher than in non-medical professions (p < 0.01) and further several specific factors influencing occurrence of stress and burnout syndrome was identified (i.e. age, length of medical practice etc). The study supports the hypothesis that medical professions represent serious factor in stress load and thus persons in medical professions should be subject to special care.