Stress and coping strategies of medical students during their first clinical practice - a pilot study

Introduction: The medical profession is acknowledged as one of the most stressful. The time devoted to acquire knowledge and practical skills is a source of stress for students, but also an opportunity to learn how to deal with it. Aim of the research: To assess how medical students deal with stress during their first clinical practice. Material and methods: The study was conducted in a group of 526 students of: nursing, physiotherapy, medical rescue, and obstetrics at a university. The research tools included: an original questionnaire, the Perceived Stress Scale, and the Stress Management Inventory. The dependence between variables was established using the Spearman's rank correlation. A significance level of alpha = 0.05 was assumed in the tests. Results: Almost half of the students experienced high levels of stress, and more than half of them manifested high levels of self-efficacy. The participants dealt with difficult situations mainly by active coping, planning, and seeking instrumental support. The paramedics and the midwives more often turned to active coping than did the physiotherapists. Younger people were more inclined to choose strategies associated with seeking support (rho = -0.134, p = 0.001). It was shown that strategies of managing difficult situations based on helplessness were more often followed by older people (rho = 0.126, p = 0.002). The greater sense of self-efficacy in the participants, the more often they chose active stress coping strategies. Conclusions: Active stress management strategies should be developed in students also to strengthen their sense of self-efficacy.