Quality of Life and Spirituality in Medical Students

Abstract

Quality of life is an eminently human condition that informs the perception of how the individual is in his life values, while spirituality and religiosity represent the connection with the sacred, the transcendental practices in the search for existential causes. Bringing these concepts to the academic environment can help in promoting health and better training for future medical professionals. The main objective of this study is to evaluate the relationship between quality of life and spirituality of medical students at a private university in the state of Paraná, Brazil. One hundred eighty-nine medical students answered three questionnaires (socio-demographic, WHOQOL-bref on quality of life, and DUREL spirituality) during the first and last year of graduation. In this study, we found that the general quality of life of medical students, according to the WHOQOL-bref scale, is regular (3.78), and there was no statistically significant difference in the general quality of life between the first and the last year of medical school. (p = 0.156). The social and environmental domains leveraged the scores more than the physical and psychological domains in both groups. On the Durel scale, intrinsic religiosity (IR) stood out more than organized (OR) and non-organized (NOR) religiosity, with statistically significant differences (p = 0.018), which may imply that these students prefer to seek more in themselves, a harmony of life between their beliefs and their particular needs, internalizing existential and spiritual reflexes that are reflected in their behaviors and decisions.