English

Abstract

BACKGROUND Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-19) popularly known as COVID-19 is an emerging pandemic which resulted in varying degrees of lockdown in India. Medical undergraduates remain affected due to lockdown-imposed disruptions in medical education, an unprecedented event, which can cause significant academic stress in addition to psychological stress. Understanding the coping methods is essential to develop interventions and to minimise the adverse effects of stress during pandemics. We wanted to determine the major coping methods using French version of the Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (COPE), a novel 4 - factor structure among medical undergraduates of a private tertiary teaching institution during COVID-19 lockdown period and describe the selfmanagement of the stress as verbatim narrative statements. METHODS A cross-sectional, web-based survey based on French version of the Brief COPE, a novel 4-factor structure was used to assess the major coping methods among medical undergraduates of a private, tertiary care teaching medical institution in Chennai, South India. Self-management of stress was documented verbatim as narrative statements. After obtaining approval from institutional ethical committee and informed consent, the web-survey data from Google forms was collected from 223 medical undergraduate students and analysed using STATA (V 12.0) statistical package. The strategies for self-management of stress were identified and classified into themes. RESULTS Among total 223 respondents, 132 (59.2 %) were female medicos and 88 (39. 5 %) males, and mean age was 20.36 (SD +_1. 43) years. Major coping method adopted was positive thinking (115, 51.6 %), followed by avoidance (44, 19.7 %), seeking social support (37, 16.6 %) and problem solving (19, 8.5 %). Students with positive thinking had high levels of managing stress very well (33 %) followed by avoidance (10 %) compared to other methods but there was no significant difference in the self-rating of coping between different coping methods. CONCLUSIONS The coping mechanism of medical undergraduates reveals positive outlook while experiencing COVID-19 pandemic related extended lockdowns. KEYWORDS SARS-Cov-19, Medical Undergraduates, Coping, Cope Brief Inventory - 4 Scale, Positive Thinking