Medical curricula are considered as toughest of all curricula of undergraduate professionals. Student faces many stress provoking factors in the academic course. In time identification and adoption of coping strategy can ensure proper achievement of goal of the curriculum. The objective of this prospective study was to find out the nature and intensity of stressors perceived by the mid level medical students (phase II & III) before their summative examination. Regularly passed students of phase II and III undergraduate students of Armed Forces Medical College, Bangladesh were included in the study and the responses were collected in the first week of April 2018 (3 weeks prior to beginning of summative examination). Validated structured set of questionnaire (Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire -MSSQ) was selected for the study and was distributed to the volunteers of target population only. Falling behind in reading schedule, getting poor marks, facing illness or death of the patients and too much restriction in campus were identified as high intensity stressors by the phase II students. On the other hand high workload, not enough scope of medical skill practice, facing illness or death of the patients and too much restriction in campus were identified as high intensity stressors by the phase III students. Intensity of stressors was significantly higher in phase II students than phase III (p=0.000). This study focused the present status of an area. Identification and incorporation of strategies to improve the teaching, learning, evaluation and educational environment are required to help the students to develop stress coping skills in early medical career in order to reduce negative effects of stressors on the future doctors.Bangladesh Journal of Medical Education Vol.9(2) 2018: 3-10

Introduction: Rapid advancement of biomedical knowledge along with consistent increase in technical facilities in medical science changes the teaching-learning processes of undergraduate medical course in many countries and Anatomy is no exception. Some of these changes have been incorporated into the undergraduate medical course in Bangladesh and some are yet to be incorporated. In this situation, a thorough understanding is required to know how different aspects of Anatomy are distributed in terms of weightage in the written assessment of Anatomy course, which indirectly influence the learning of the course. To have an insight regarding this, thorough analyses of recent question papers of two universities were done in this study. Objectives: Analyses of question papers give a clue about the variation in the distribution of weightage in different aspects of Anatomy in the undergraduate written exams (due to absence) in terms of allocation of proper weightage in the curriculum. Study design: A descriptive, observational study involving quantitative analysis. Place and period of study: Anatomy Department of AFMC from March 2012 to August 2012. Materials and Methods: The study includes analysis of 28 short answer question papers and 23 multiple choice question papers of two universities in Dhaka. This is a quantitative study and means of percentage value were calculated by using SPSS program for analyzing the question paper. Results: It is observed from the analyses that Topographic Anatomy got maximum coverage (40-89%) and aspects like Genetics, Radiographic Anatomy and Surface was covered less than 3% (absent in some question papers) of the question papers. The result of the present study will help in improvement of present written assessment system of the undergraduate Anatomy course. Conclusion: From result and analysis it is evident that the present assessment system needs to give proper weightage to different aspects of Anatomy to make the assessment more valid, objective and reliable. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jafmc.v9i1.18729Journal of Armed Forces Medical College Bangladesh Vol.9(1) 2013: 75-83

Response or reaction of the mind to the pressure of life is stress. Medical students of Bangladesh are in stress to meet the demands of the curriculum. This study was conducted on the regularly passed final year students of a medical college to find out the nature of stresses perceived by them. The response was collected on a validated structured set of questionnaire, 3 weeks prior to the University level summative examination and 63 students (33 male and 30 female) participated in the study. Stress was expressed in five levels and scored as 0 to 4. Academic related factors were identified as maximum stress provoking (2.5 ± 1.3) than group activity (1.6 ± 1.4), drive (1.4 ± 1.5), teaching-learning (2.3 ± 1.3), personnel (1.8 ± 1.6) or social (1.9 ± 1.5) related factors. Of that group of stress, ‘falling behind reading schedule’ and ‘large amount of content to be learned’ were revealed as heavy stressors. Examination was identified as a severe stressor in 42.4% male, but was marked less (16.7%) in the female. ‘Too much restriction in the campus’ was observed as heavy stressors among the factors other than the academic related stressors. Students may be motivated to develop a coping strategy for academic and teaching-learning related stress.

DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.3329/jafmc.v8i2.16340 JAFMC Vol.8(2) 2012 pp.03-07