Perception of stress among medical undergraduate during coronavirus disease-19 pandemic on exposure to online teaching

Abstract

Background: Stress is the physiological and psychological state which could overwhelmed an individual’s capacity to adequately respond to it. The coronavirus disease (COVID 19) outbreak in India had created a sudden shutdown of conventionally designed medical teaching, because of which the medical students were in a stage of dilemma. The new digital e-learning methods psychologically affected these students invariably. Aim and Objective: We hypothesized that significant stress was associated with non-use of digital online e-learning as well as lack of communication between teachers and students. Materials and Methods: After the institutional ethical clearance, this online survey study was done on medical students. A total of 924 students participated in the study. All the students voluntarily participated in the survey based on perceived stress scale (PSS) (ten items). The PSS-10 is used to compare the stress level in between Group I who was using digital e-learning methods and Group II who was not using digital e-learning methods. Results: The PSS-10 score was significantly high in the group who was not using digital online e-learning methods during this COVID 19 pandemic lockdown. Conclusion: The perception of perceived stress is high among the medical students who were not using online digital e-learning approaches. More research is needed to identify potential confounders.