Effect of year of study on stress levels in male undergraduate dental students

Abstract

ObjectiveStress among dental students can be a significant threat, resulting in physical and/or mental illness, and have a negative effect on students’ performance and the professional practice of dentistry. Stress can occur from different sources. The purpose of this study is to test whether the year of study has an effect on the stress levels of dental students.MethodOur study consisted of a cross-sectional survey using a modified version of the Dental Environment Stress (DES) questionnaire. The questionnaires were filled out by male undergraduate dental students at King Saud University in Riyadh City during the 2010–2011 academic year (n = 214).ResultsThe results show the most common sources of stress: examinations and completing clinical requirements. Moreover, in the five-year lecture-based traditional curriculum, the third year students reported the highest level of stress, whereas the first year reported the lowest level of stress.ConclusionThird year undergraduate dental students reported the highest level of stress. This stress could be reduced by reviewing and modifying the dental curriculum by allowing students to have contact with patients more gradually, starting from the first year, in addition to adding stress prevention and intervention programs in dental curricula.

Perception of Environment Stressors in Chilean Dentistry Students

“…This is in line with others research that also used the DES questionnaire [2,6,8,19,24], but differs from other studies [7,12,25,26]. The perception of stress does not depend on the progress of the course, but would be influenced by gender and the first option of studying dentistry [12].…”

“…The perception of stress does not depend on the progress of the course, but would be influenced by gender and the first option of studying dentistry [12]. Third-year students had the highest levels of perceived stress, which they attribute to the transition phase from pre-clinical to clinical, where they begin to relate with patients and meet requirements [7,25]. On the other hand, some authors reported that the first two years of the career, students have greater perception of stress [26].…”

“…When assessing stress in dentistry students, compared to students in other health careers, it seems that in the dental career this is higher [7][8][9]. Therefore, the perception of academic stress is essential to provide valuable feedback on the efficiency and acceptability of educational methods, especially in dentistry students, who even in the early stages of their education can already demonstrate signs or predisposition to burnout syndrome, which implies emotional exhaustion, depersonalization and reduction of personal achievement [10,11].…”

A longitudinal study of psychological stress among undergraduate dental students at the University of Jordan

“…Results of these investigations have shown that psychological stress was highest in final year students and lowest in first year students [2, 9, 11]. Some studies however have found that stress was highest in third year students when the transition to clinical teaching occurred [3, 10]. This would seem to imply that as students progressed through dental school, their level of stress increased, but due to the cross-sectional nature of these investigations, this assumption could not be verified.…”

Salivary levels of SIgA and perceived stress among dental students

“…Factorial analysis allows identification of how the items are organized in subscales according to the samples' constructs instead of being theoretically divided. The stressful potential of the subscale Academic Performance is well documented, with the item "Examinations and Grades" being frequently perceived as the most stressful [38][39][40] . An inverse relationship was detected between this subscale and SIgA concentration and secretion rate among 2nd year students, which corroborates previous findings…”