Abstract
Introduction: COVID-19 pandemic has significantly impacted the academic and personal life of all college students.However, it has had a more profound impact on medical undergraduates. Objectives: 1) Survey of changes in the daily routine,views about their career and study habits of the MBBS students 2) To document changes in eating habits, other health-related habits, and self-perception of body image Methods: Permission of Institutional Ethics Committee (IEC) was obtained. An online observational cross-sectional study was conducted, using an online Google Docs-based questionnaire; circulated among MBBS students of all years, studying in 12 medical colleges both government and private medical institutions of India via WhatsApp. Results: We observed an increase in sleeping hours in 75.1% of students, an increase in sleep onset latency (62.6%),and difficulty maintaining sleep (38.3%). About 67.1% of students reported dedicating more hours to their hobbies, and 71.1% reported a decrease in time spent studying throughout the lockdown. We even observed contrasting responses towards the pandemic wherein 50.3% of the students wanted to volunteer and join the workforce while 37% were worried about the situation becoming worse. The frequency of meals and snacking in between meals had increased. Binge eating habits were noticed in around 13% on a daily basis. As a means to cope with this overeating, around 11% of students used laxatives and induced vomiting. Students also reported medical problems like fluctuations in weight, stomach cramps, syncope, and fatigue. Conclusion: Significant disturbances were observed in the daily routine, eating habits, and study habits of medical students, which had perhaps led to bigger perplexities of career-related uncertainty and improper coping techniques of varying degrees.These can have a nationwide impact on our health care system, stressing the need to strengthen its budding doctors to make them healthier and more resilient for the future
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