Revista Ciencias Biomédicas (Dec 2015)
ACADEMIC STRESS IN STUDENTS FROM HEALTH DEPARTMENTS IN A PUBLIC UNIVERSITY OF CARTAGENA-COLOMBIA
Abstract
Introduction: stress is a factor that influences in the quality of life and performance of the individual. It appears when a person identifies dangerous situations that exceeds its own resources and endanger its own being-well. Objective: to describe the stress level in university students from health departments in Cartagena-Colombia. Methods: a descriptive study was carried out in 266 female students chosen by random probabilistic sampling from departments of Nursing, Dentistry, Pharmaceutical chemistry and Medicine of a public university in Cartagena-Colombia. The students met the requirement of inclusion and signed the consent form. Three instruments were performed: sociodemographic survey, family Apgar and SISCO inventory by Barraza. This survey has 31 items, they were classified by Lickert scale of 1 to 5, where 1 is never, 2 hardly ever, 3 sometimes, 4 almost always and 5 always, this scales is used to identify the absence or presence of stress in the students. The details were obtained using Microsoft Excel SPSS 21.0 version program and descriptive statistics to analyze the information. Results: the 66.2% of the female students were single, women who were under 20 lived with their family nucleus, the 63.6% were of social strata two and three and those who do not work and lived with less than four dollars per day represented the 84.3%. The results of family Apgar showed functional families (80.9%). The 88.7% of female students presented stress and of those who suffer most are the students from Medicine and Pharmaceutical Chemistry departments with signs of permanent fatigue, anxiety, anguish (35.2%) and changes in food intake (32.5%). The 50.8% of them turn to religion as strategy of confrontation. Conclusion: the students presented high stress levels. The students with greater presence of stress were those from Pharmaceutical Chemistry department. Evaluations, academic work and the limited time to complete the academic commitments generate most of these conditions. Rev.cienc.biomed. 2015;6(2):309-318 KEYWORDS Student; Physiological stress; Psychological stress; Behavior.
