Abstract
Background: It is believed that medical students are more faced with stressors during their academic studies. The highest rate of stress and anxiety in clinical education settings may negatively affect the learning and success of these students. The aim of the current study is investigating the stressors dentistry students face within educational settings and its relationship with their general health condition. Materials and Methods: The current statistical-analytic study performed upon 180 dentistry students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences in 2014. A 54-item Student Stressors Questionnaire was used to assess the students stress and a 28-item Goldberg Questionnaire was used to evaluate the general health of the students. Likert 4-item scale (0 to 3) was used for scoring both questionnaires. Results: Mean age of the participants was 24.37±2.84. 6.65% of students were female and the mean stress level was 1.2±0.6. 36.7%, 48.3% and 15% of students had low, average and high stress level, respectively. There was no significant relationship between students’ stress and sex or their marital status. 50%, 23.3%, 20.6% and 6.1% of students had high, average, poor and very poor general health, respectively. There was no significant relationship between students’ gender and their general health. There was also no significant relationship between students’ stress and their general health. Conclusion: Almost half of dentistry students had average stress and 15% had high stress in which levels its pressure may get sever with increased academic period and difficulty level of the academic units. Correct educational programs, periodic counseling meetings and use of skilled counselors at universities can play influential roles to reduce stress level of dentistry students.
Highlights
The concept of mental health is an aspect of the total definition of health and it includes all methods and measures taken to prevent being affected by mental diseases
Regarding the importance of clinical education in establishing principle skills and occupational abilities of dentistry students and considering the common and applied nature of medical courses and that interest in mental, social and educational environments is grown such that in recent years, most of the medical universities have put the evaluation of clinical education condition as the basic fundamental of their educational programs, it seems that the first step in quality improvement would be identifying the stressors of clinical education
A total of 180 dentistry students of Tabriz University of Medical Sciences, aging 24.37 ± 2.84 participated in the current study in which 65.6% were female and 4.34% were male students
Summary
The concept of mental health is an aspect of the total definition of health and it includes all methods and measures taken to prevent being affected by mental diseases. Regarding the results of studies mentioning that the stressors are related with psychological health of dentistry students, it shall be attempted to reduce stress of them those resulting from dentistry occupation by psychological interventions including individual counseling, creation of cooperative teams, group therapy, increased skills of coping with stress and environmental intervention such as improved occupational relationships, increased networks of social and occupational support and changes in working time. Regarding the importance of clinical education in establishing principle skills and occupational abilities of dentistry students and considering the common and applied nature of medical courses and that interest in mental, social and educational environments is grown such that in recent years, most of the medical universities have put the evaluation of clinical education condition as the basic fundamental of their educational programs, it seems that the first step in quality improvement would be identifying the stressors of clinical education. Scores of 0-54, 55-108 and 109-164 were classified as mild, mediate and severe stresses, respectively
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