Perceived Sources of Stress among Undergraduate Students at Rama Dental College Hospital and Research Centre, Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India

Abstract

Background: Dental education is regarded as a complex, demanding, and stressful learning environment. Students are subjected to different kind of stressors, such as the pressure of academics to the obligation to succeed, an uncertain future, and difficulties with integrating into the system. Objectives: The objective of this study is to identify sources of stress among undergraduate students in Rama Dental College Hospital and Research Centre, Kanpur and to investigate whether specific stressors were related to the year of study and gender. Materials and Methods: A cross-sectional study was carried out in a classroom setting by using modified dental environmental stress (DES) questionnaire containing 29 questions among undergraduate student at Rama Dental College Hospital and Research Centre, Kanpur. A total of 349 students were purposively selected. Student’s t-test and one-way ANOVA with the post-hoc Bonferroni test were used to analyze the data at the significant level of P < 0.05. Results: A study population consisted of 141 (40.4%) of males and 208 (59.6%) of female with mean age of 22.07 ± 2.597 years. Of the 29 questions, 20 were reported to be “stressful” by >70% of the students. In gender comparison, female were suffered more stress than males, which was significant (P < 0.05). The year students feel with a higher mean score. The main sources of stress were found to be fear of failing, financial responsibilities/repaying of education loan, responsibilities of comprehensive patient care, managing a child patient, difficulty in learning precision manual skill required in preclinical laboratory work, lack of clinical material, which were significant among the students. Conclusion: Congenital environment need to be created for dental education to reduce stress among the students