Factors affecting stress among students in dental colleges of neo-capital state in India

• Main Authors: Parveen Sultana Shaik, Srinivas Pachava, Chinna Babu Palli
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Published: Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications 2019-01-01
• Series: Journal of Indian Association of Public Health Dentistry
• Subjects: Dental education; dental students; India; occupational stress; professional burnout
• Online Access: http://www.jiaphd.org/article.asp?issn=2319-5932;year=2019;volume=17;issue=1;spage=41;epage=47;aulast=Shaik
• ISSN: 2319-5932; 2350-0484

Background: Stress in dental students may be multifactorial, arising from the academic and sociocultural environment. Identifying the sources of stress helps in advocating policy changes and strategies to alleviate the stress. Aim: To evaluate the factors affecting stress among undergraduate and postgraduate dental students of Andhra Pradesh, India. Materials and Methods: A self-administered Modified Dental Environmental Stress questionnaire was distributed among 390 dental students who participated voluntarily. Data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, version 20, and ANOVA and Student's t-test were conducted where P ≤ 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Students perceived more stress from domains related to the future prospects (2.53 ± 0.97) and personal factors (2.35 ± 0.66) followed by stress associated with faculty (2.12 ± 0.78) and clinical/academic factors (2.12 ± 0.55), with a statistically significant difference (P = 0.001). Third- and final-year undergraduate students perceived higher levels of stress regarding future, clinical/academic factors, and personal factors. Students who chose dentistry as their first choice of admission experienced less stress compared to the students whose choice of admission was medicine or other courses. Conclusion: Overall stress levels were slight to moderate and were significantly higher among the third- and final-year undergraduate students.