Assessment of Stress Prevalence among Pakistani Medical Students

Abstract

Background: In the modern era of medical teaching the application of the integrated medical education system has substituted boring conventional lectures with more student centered, interesting and interactive techniques based on organ systems with clinical applications. Aim: To determine the prevalence of stress (by DASS scoring system) in male and female students of private medical school in integrated teaching system. Methodology: This study with enrolled students (n=190) was carried out after research ethical committee’s IIMC approval at Islamic International Medical college, Riphah university, Islamabad-Pakistan. Both male and female medical students were enrolled. Level of stress among them was noted after filling DASS questionnaire profoma. Data was analyzed by SPSS software, version 23. Chi square was used to determine the association of stress with gender and year of study as p-value ≤0.05 was considered significant. Results: The mean age of all the enrolled students was 22.5±1.6 with the range of 20 to 24 years. Female students (65%) had stress of varying degrees. This difference between male and female students depending on stress parameter was statistically significant with p-value of <0.001. Conclusion: We concluded that females medical students develop more stress in integrated medical education system than male students.