Stress management strategies among medical students

Parul Gairola ,Rani Srivastava ,Alka Agrawal

doi:10.18231/2455-1732.2018.0009

Abstract

Introduction: Stress doesn’t only exist among professionals but also among medical students who undergo high ranked stress due to study burden. Although some degree of stress is assumed as a normal part of medical training and can serve as motivating factor but not all students find the stress manageable. Stress may give rise to feelings of fear, incompetence, hopelessness, anger, and guilt and has been associated with both psychological and physical / physiological disorders. We need to explore most effective and healthy coping strategies for the medical students. Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify key stressors by assessing the aptitude for language (English), stress, anxiety level among medical students and to explore the most effective stress management strategies. Materials and Methods: 185 medical students i.e., 91 MBBS and 94 BDS students. For above purpose measures used were Differential Aptitude Test (DAT) for language (English), Cohen’s Perceived Stress Scale (PSS), Sinha`s Anxiety Scale (SAS) and Stress Coping Checklist (SCC). Result and Discussions: Students were found to be moderately stressed and anxious but found to have adequate English aptitude, grammatical part was found to be questionable. Stress coping level was adequate being in 1ST year and most useful stress coping strategies were listed. Conclusion: Stress is really exerting element for all of us but the students who are involved in higher studies specifically medical entrants are needed to be identified, guided and supported with immediate effects. Keywords: Stress, Stress coping, Medical students.

Highlights

Stress doesn’t only exist among professionals and among medical students who undergo high ranked stress due to study burden
When we compared scores of spellings and grammar, we found that serious problem with grammatical part is present among majority of the students
The results show that lack of English language is one of the stressors because students had limited exposure of English and the sudden transition into less spoken language has increased their difficulty

Summary

Introduction

Stress doesn’t only exist among professionals and among medical students who undergo high ranked stress due to study burden. We need to explore most effective and healthy coping strategies for the medical students. Objective: The purpose of this study was to identify key stressors by assessing the aptitude for language (English), stress, anxiety level among medical students and to explore the most effective stress management strategies. A few studies have assessed the perceptions of stress and coping strategies among medical students.[2] When attempts were made in this area it was found that stressors affecting medical students’ overall wellbeing were related to their training especially academic matters.[3] the most common stressors were tests and examinations, time pressure, too much content to be studied, getting behind in work, conflicting demands, not getting work done within time planned and heavy workload, all are contributing stress among students. When compared with students of other fields, stress levels of medical students were found to be significantly high,[4,5] along with high level of anxiety and depression.[6]

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Conclusion