3 research outputs found
Prevalence of Stress among First Year Medical Students and Factors Influencing It: A Single Centre Questionnaire Based Study
Background: Prevalence of stress in medical students is very high at about 30 to 50 % as per available literature. They need to acquire a huge amount of knowledge and skills. This study intends to find out the prevalence of stress in first year medical students in a medical college in Kerala.Methods:After obtaining Institutional ethical clearance, the study was conducted in 2018 among first year medical students of a medical college in Kerala.The students were asked to fill a predesigned and validated questionnaire, Medical Student Stress Questionnaire (MSSQ-40). There are a total of 40 questions. The students were asked to mark their response along the Likertscale from 0 to 4. To find out whether there is any significant difference in stress between genders, blood groups, mode of accommodation, sleep and diet, Chi- square test was used.Results:A total of 150 first year medical students filled up the questionnaire, of which 61 were males and 89 were females. High degree of stress was recorded in 47%, moderate in 11% and severe in 4% of students. Next most affected domain was the social related stress, which was present in 46% of students. Sleep of 7 to 9 hours was taken as adequate and less than 7 hours as inadequate. A significant difference in the academic stress was found in the two groups (P= 0.019).Conclusion:Prevalence of stress among first year medical students is high in our setting. The most important domain of stress was academic stressors. Difficulty in understanding the content, heavy workload, large amount of content and lack of time to revise the topics are the major factors contributing to academic stress