Purpose To compare differences in happiness and stress and related factors between pre-clinical and clinical year medical students during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic.
Methods A cross-sectional study was conducted in the Faculty of Medicine, Chiang Mai University, Thailand. All undergraduate medical students were requested to voluntarily respond to an electronic survey. Demographic data, related factors of happiness and stress, scores from the Thai version of the Oxford Happiness Questionnaire (Thai-OHQ), and Thai Stress Questionnaire (Thai-ST5) were collected.
Results There were 369 responses, 64.8% from preclinical students and 35.2% responses from clinical students, and 53.9% were women. The mean age of the participants was 20.62±1.81 years. The most frequent platforms that the students used to track COVID-19 information were Facebook 43.9% and Twitter 43.4%. Both groups had a low level of stress. No difference was found in the Thai-OHQ score (p=0.323) and the Thai-ST5 score (p=0.278). With multivariable analysis, two factors significantly related to the happier students included higher health satisfaction scores (p<0.001) and maintaining an exercise program during the COVID-19 pandemic (p=0.015).
Conclusion There was no difference in the happiness and stress levels between the two groups during the first outbreak of COVID-19 in Thailand. To increase happiness, promoting awareness of health satisfaction and regularity of exercise for the medical students should be initiated. To direct the information during a disease outbreak such as the COVID-19 pandemic, Facebook, and Twitter are the primary platforms to use.
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Purpose Emotional intelligence is a factor affecting the health of individuals, and happiness is another factor affecting it. Medical students’ health can greatly affect a community’s health due to the important role of medical students in maintaining and improving it. Accordingly, we aimed to study the relationship between emotional intelligence and happiness among the students of the Shiraz Medical School.
Methods This study is an analytical, cross-sectional study. The target population of this study was the medical students who began studying in the medical school and the international branch of Shiraz University of Medical Sciences from September 2014 to September 2017. The sample size was 300 students who were selected by a systematic sampling method. The instruments for collecting information in this study were Oxford Happiness Inventory and Siberia Schering’s Emotional Intelligence Questionnaire. The significance level of the tests was set at 0.05.
Results The mean age of 292 responded participants were 20.73 with standard deviation of ±1.81 emotional intelligence (p<0.001), level of stress (p<0.001), and grade (p=0.03) and type of personality (p<0.001) can explain the changes in the happiness level and they were significant effective factors in the regression modeling.
Conclusion Emotional intelligence was a predictive factor for happiness in medical students. Students with higher emotional intelligence felt healthier. And happiness in extroverted students was higher than introverted ones. It is suggested that the results of this study should be confirmed with prospective studies.
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PURPOSE Medical education is perceived as being very stressful, which leads to declines in subjective well-being in medical students. Therefore, student counseling is becoming an exigent issue. The goal of this study was to investigate the academic difficulties and subjective well-being of medical students to identify their needs with regard to counseling. In addition, we analyzed help-seeking behaviors of students to develop an effective counseling program.
METHODS We performed a survey (n=205) to determine the extent to which medical students encounter academic difficulties in their lives in medical school and how they attempt to resolve their problems. In addition, we used the Oxford Happiness Scale to examine the relationships between academic performance, previous help-seeking behavior, and happiness in medical students.
RESULTS Of various types of problems, 62% of medical students perceived learning difficulties to be the most serious issue in medical school. Despite encountering difficulties, more than 67% of students failed to seek help from faculty or their fellow students. There was a significant relationship between happiness score and previous help-seeking behavior. A lack of perceived seriousness was identified as the most significant barrier to seeking help.
CONCLUSION Access to counseling programs must be improved for students with apparent academic difficulties who do not seek counseling. Through such programs, students can learn and practice methods of coping with their difficulties and develop medical and professional competence.
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