Educational stress and coping strategies among medical students.

Abstract

Objectives: Students acquiring professional education have to face many challenges, most important of them is the stress related to their studies which when compounded by the absence of appropriate coping strategies makes a huge impact on their personal and professional lives. The purpose of this study was to identify the effects of stress related to professional education, on the medical MBBS students and various coping strategies used by them. Study Design: Cross Sectional study. Setting: Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur. Period: January 2019 to June 2019. Material & Methods: To investigate the ongoing professional education related stress and coping strategies among students doing MBBS. A total of 500 students participated in this study. The tools used were Perceived Stress Scale-14 (PSS14) and ACOPE to measure the stress level and coping strategies among the students and data was analyzed using the SPSS -22 statistical program. Results: The study showed that majority of students had PSS score ranging between 34 to 59 with an average PSS-14 score of 45.5. Major bulk of students had a score of 45 which reflects a high stress level among the students. The average measured ACOPE score was 156±20.4 which indicated a moderate level of abilities of the students to cope with the stress. Conclusion: This study concluded that professional studies related stress is very common among medical students and generally they are not skilled enough to use effective coping strategies to cope, which adversely affects their performance in professional life as well as personal lives.