Medical interns’ anxiety about their professional skills acquired during their internal medicine clerkship amid the COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Aims: The purpose of this study was to investigate the perceived anxiety status and related factors of Ege University Faculty of Medicine (EUFM) interns regarding the professional skills they acquired during their 4th year of Internal Medicine Clerkship (IMC) training during the Coronavirus disease-2019 pandemic. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted between February and March 2022 with medical interns who received face-to-face (n=240) or online (n=120) IMC training at EUFM during the 2019-2020 academic year. The data were collected using a 38-item online survey questionnaire developed by a team of experts. Medical interns were asked to rate their anxiety status on a scale of 0-1 (“1” indicated anxiety “0” indicated no anxiety) for 22 diseases. The total score obtained from the list was labeled as the “medical interns’ perceived anxiety total score” (minimum-maximum=0-22) which was also the primary outcome. Results: Of the 90 study participants, 70.0% received face-to-face training during their internship in internal medicine. Demographic data revealed that 57.8% of participants were female, 20.0% expressed a desire to work abroad, and 52.2% reported feeling inadequacy in practicing their medical profession. Medical interns reported a mean perceived anxiety score of 13.1±5.0 out of 22 for managing various diseases. There was no significant difference in anxiety scores between the interns who received face-to-face (median=13.0) or online (median=14.0) training (p=0.482). Conclusions: The study revealed that both online and face-to-face trained interns experienced similar levels of anxiety, with no significant difference in perceived anxiety scores between the two groups. Further research is required to assess the long-term effects of online education on the professional skills and anxiety of medical students, particularly in the context of its limitations in terms of practical skill acquisition.

Keywords

• medical education
• clinical skills
• clinical competence
• anxiety
• covid-19 pandemic