Workload and health problems in medical students

Abstract

The inability to cope successfully with the enormous stress of medical education may lead to a cascade of consequences at both a personal and professional level. Although common, depression associates with a high degree of disability and chronicity, with symptoms such as low mood, lack of energy, poor concentration, low self-esteem, and a lack of interest in the environment however stress has been shown to have deleterious effects on one‘s physical and mental well-being .The extreme stress levels inherent in the medical profession, put premedical and medical students at risk for both physical and psychological problems. The aim of this study is to determine the workload stress which leads to different health problems in medical and dental students during their undergraduate training. It was a self-administered questionnaire based survey conducted on 114 medical and dental students (32 males and 118 females) who were randomly selected in Fatima Jinnah Dental College and Dow University of Health Sciences. The result of this study shows that undergraduate medical students are suffering with stress and anxiety due to their hectic schedule and vast syllabus. From this study we can evaluate that health problems such as muscular aches and pains especially in neck, head, lower back and shoulders have increased which leads to sleep disorders. Data was analyzed using SPSS 20.0.This study suggests that a small percentage of medical students experience physical and mental distress throughout their medical undergraduate training.

Keywords

• self-esteem
• workload
• stress
• medical students