Overwhelming Yet Striving; The Story of IIUM Medical Students.
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.31436/ijcs.v5i1.233Keywords:
resilience, psychological distress, burn-out, medical school, undergraduateAbstract
Introduction: Medicine is known to be tough and requires more than just intelligence. The implementation of other courses was deemed necessary to equip medical students with emotional intelligence, problem-solving and soft skills. However, their perception of their study plan and its relation to their grade has yet to be explored. This study aimed to assess the association between the grade and perception of the study plan among the pre-clinical medical students.
Methods: A 47 items self-administered questionnaire was distributed to Year 2 students (n = 137) in Kulliyyah of Medicine, International Islamic University Malaysia. The questionnaire included their study plan implementation, comprising of medical and non-medical courses, and how they perceived it. We obtained their official assessment results from the academic office.
Results: Eighty four percent (n = 115) students responded. Most students spent 22 hours/week for medical courses self-study and assignments, and 18 hours/week studying and completing non-medical courses assignments after hours. Seventy percent (n = 80) felt that their schedule is overwhelming. Only 11 failed (9.6%) the medical course, and three failed other courses at least once. There was no difference in the grade regardless of feeling overwhelmed or not (p = 0.65).
Conclusion: Despite the overwhelming study plan, the proportion of failure was relatively low. While this could indicate some degree of resilience in the medical students, precaution is necessary to safeguard their physical and mental wellbeing and prevent burnout.
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