Stress among Clinical Dental Students in a Private Dental College in Jeddah

Introduction: Environment in many dental colleges is highly competitive and stressful. Stress of students has two main factors personality-oriented and work/study-oriented. Aim: To assess the factors responsible for stress among the dental students in a private dental college. Materials and Methods: The cross-sectional study population included the students of dentistry program who were from fourth year to sixth year which are clinical years and students spend most of their time in the dental clinic. To investigate relevance and influence of the factors on stress experienced by students in the clinical years, a questionnaire was designed. The questionnaire has been tested for its validity and reliability based on a pilot study and pre-survey discussions with peers in the college. The association of the responses of the students to factors associated with stress was calculated using chi-square test. The data were analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 23.0. Results: The responses of the students have been analysed, 64% of the students do feel that they are stressed during exams. A 52% students strongly agreed that the amount of work assigned was more. A 22% students agree that they lack the confidence of being a successful dental student. More than half of the students (71%) have lack of time for relaxation. The p-value of <0.05 was considered as statistically significant. Conclusion: This is an important study as dental students of Jeddah, are under tremendous amount of stress which is due to their own personality traits or created by environment.