Exam stress and coping strategies in 2nd year undergraduate medical students – Time for introspection

Abstract

Background: The undergraduate medical curriculum is vast and knowledge-intensive, leading to stress in medical students. Stress at the time of exam assessment is seen to be prevalent in medical students across the globe. The stress may be so great as to cause severe physical and psychological harm. Objective: A cross-sectional observational study was undertaken to study the prevalence of exam stress, gender differences in anxiety scores, and coping strategies employed by students using a self-administered questionnaire. Methods: The study consisted of 104 undergraduate medical students at the end of the 5th semester examination in a medical college in North India. Results: 36.5% of students reported >36 anxiety score indicating high levels of stress. Females had significantly higher anxiety scores (35.05 ± 8.62) as compared to males (30.63 ± 9.32) (p=0.014). Hostelers vs. day scholars did not show significant differences in anxiety scores. 37% of students had a panic attack before an exam, 35.6% of students had trouble sleeping the night before the exam. Females were 2.171 times (95% CI 0.950 – 4.961) more likely to have anxiety >36 than males. Listening to music and sleeping were the most frequent coping strategies employed. Students who could alleviate their stress were 3.636 times more likely to have low anxiety. Males were 3.254 times (95% CI 1.233 – 8.585) more likely to have the stress alleviated than females. Conclusion: Medical students experience increased stress during exams which need to be urgently addressed.

Keywords

• undergraduate medical students
• india
• anxiety
• medical education
• coping
• exams
• psychological stress