Abstract
BackgroundStress among pharmacy students could greatly affect their learning activities and general well-being. It is therefore necessary to investigate how stress relates with the quality of life of students to maintain and/or improve their personal satisfaction and academic performance. A school-based longitudinal study was used to investigate the relationship between stress and quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. The 10-item perceived stress scale and the shorter version of the WHO quality of life scale were administered to the same participants at two time points i.e. Time 1 (4 weeks into the semester) and Time 2 (8 weeks afterwards). The correlations and differences between the study variables were tested using the Pearson’s coefficient and independent sample t test.ResultsThe mean stress scores were higher at Time 2 compared to Time 1 for the first and second years. However, there was no significant difference in stress for different year groups—Time 1 [F (3) = 0.410; p = 0.746] and Time 2 [F(3) = 0.909; p = 0.439]. Female students had higher stress scores at Time 2 compared to male students. The main stressors identified in the study were; large volume of material to be studied (88.2%), laboratory report writing (78.2%), constant pressure to maintain good grades (66.4%) and the lack of leisure time (46.4%). Even though most students employed positive stress management strategies such as time management (68.2%), other students resorted to emotional eating (9.1%) and alcohol/substance use (1.8%). At Time 2, perceived stress scores were significantly negatively correlated with social relationship (r = −0.40, p ≤ 0.0001), environmental health (r = −0.37, p ≤ 0.0001), physical health (r = −0.49, p ≤ 0.0001) and psychological health (r = −0.51, p ≤ 0.0001).ConclusionThe study reported significant correlations between stress and various domains of quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. It is thus necessary to institute some personal and institutional strategies to ameliorate the effect of stress on the quality of life of pharmacy students while encouraging the use of positive stress management strategies.
Highlights
Stress among pharmacy students could greatly affect their learning activities and general well-being
Stress among students The level of stress experienced by students was measured with the perceived stress scale (PSS) at Times 1 and 2 (Table 2)
The results showed that stress scores were the highest in the 4th year the mean score
Summary
Stress among pharmacy students could greatly affect their learning activities and general well-being. It is necessary to investigate how stress relates with the quality of life of students to maintain and/or improve their personal satisfaction and academic performance. A school-based longitudinal study was used to investigate the relationship between stress and quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. Stress describes how a body reacts to external changes and is defined as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” [1]. The high level of stress has generally been attributed to the important academic and personal decisions these students usually make as they transit from adolescence into adulthood [6, 7]. Pharmacy students demonstrate comparatively higher prevalence of stress than students of the other health professions which adversely affects their
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