Prevalence and Determinants of Stress Among Medical Students of Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM)

This paper is to determine the stress level and stressors among medical students. the methods; a cross-sectional study using self-administered questionnaire which consisted of three parts namely socio demographic information, potential stressors and personal stress inventory which gave the stress score. the results; a total of 155 students (83.3%) involved in this study. the prevalence of stress among the respondents was 70.3% (109/155). prevalence of stress was found to be higher among first year (90.2%) followed by second year (71.4%), third year (67.6%) and fourth year students (42.9%). however one-way anova showed that there was no significant difference of mean stress level between the different years of study, f (2,109) =2.404, p=0.095. further analysis (between stress and no stress group) showed that environment factors (x2: 24.388, p < 0.05), and academic (x2: 4.700, p < 0.05) experienced by the respondents were significantly associated with stress development. the stressful life event identified were difficulty with study (71.0%), change in sleeping habit (60.0%) and 52.9% claimed too much coursework. the year of study were significantly (p>0.05) associated with stress. headache was found to be the highest physical stress symptoms presented by the respondents (92.9%) while forgetfulness was the highest psychological stress symptoms (92.9%). in conclusion; prevalence of stress quite high with two in every three students reported stress symptoms. prevalence of stress decreased with the progression of year of study. stress was determined by age, year of study, academic and environment related issues.