Stressors among medical college undergraduates

Abstract

Background: Medical colleges are accountable for training medical students to have sound knowledge and ability before they take up the professional responsibilities. Therefore, medical colleges typically use a curriculum of orations, simulations supervised practice, mentoring, and hands-on experience to enhance undergraduate's skill. In such a process unfortunately few areas of the training process have unintentional negative effects on student's physical and mental health. Aims and Objectives: The aim of this study is to assess stressors among medical undergraduate students. The objectives of this study are i. To compare stressors among government medical college. Undergraduates and private medical college undergraduates. ii. To compare stressors among gender. iii. To compare stressors among various years of study. Materials and Methods: This cross-sectional study consisted a sample size of 1568 participants who are undergraduate students from various medical colleges across India. The samples were drawn using convenience sampling method. The Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire (MSSQ) was the tool used to collect data for this study. Results: Academic Related Stressors (Mean score = 2.156) was higher in medical college undergraduates followed by teaching and learning related stressors, group activities related stressor, Interpersonal and intrapersonal related stressors, social related stressors and Drive and desire related stressors with mean scores of 1.711, 1707, 1.599, 1.385 and 1.243 respectively. Conclusions: Academic stress was the most broadly source of stress found and thus most often contributed to overall stress scores. Females show more stress as compared to males. Private medical college undergraduates had more medical stress compared to government medical undergraduates. Final year undergraduates had more medical stress followed by first year. This needs attention towards curriculum change process in medical education.