Medical Student Wellness in the United States During the COVID-19 Pandemic: a Nationwide Survey

Abstract

Background: As United States (US) medical students suffer higher rates of depression and anxiety than the general population, medical student wellness has been studied in recent years. One definition describes wellness as having eight dimensions: Intellectual, emotional, physical, social, occupational, financial, environmental, and spiritual. As the coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic poses unique challenges for medical students, we aimed to compare medical student wellness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Methods: An informal survey was created to assess the eight wellness dimensions and distributed via Survey Monkey to US allopathic and osteopathic medical students via email and social media. The survey was administered from March 29, 2020 to June 23, 2020. Univariable and multivariable linear mixed-effects models were used to estimate the change in students’ overall wellness using an 11-point scale ranging from 0 (least well) to 10 (most well). Generalized estimating equations were used to compare students’ responses to the eight dimensions before and during the COVID-19 pandemic.Results: On multivariable analysis, students reported a decline in their overall wellness during COVID-19 (Mdiff = -1.04; p < .001), with Asian respondents reporting almost no change in overall wellness (M = -0.69) compared to White respondents (M = -1.18; p = .049) and Black respondents (M = -1.78; p = .03). Students felt less supported and comfortable with their social (OR = 0.47) and daily (OR = 0.45) environments and expressed decreased satisfaction with their exercise (OR = 0.85), sense of purpose (OR = 0.33), and financial status (OR = 0.75). Students also expressed lower confidence (OR = 0.15) and satisfaction (OR = 0.11) with their medical education and increased anxiety (OR = 3.37) and depression (OR = 2.05).Conclusions: Medical students reported declines in overall wellness and individual wellness dimensions. These findings can be used to implement changes to improve medical student wellness.

Family function and life satisfaction of postgraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic: the mediating role of meaning in life and depression

“…Our findings enrich our insights on how family function improves life satisfaction of postgraduate medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic. Few previous studies on medical students’ life satisfaction have been conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic, and even when studies have investigated medical students’ life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic ( Nikolis et al., 2021 ; Yun et al., 2021 ), however, they have not explored the underlying mechanisms of this phenomenon, nor have they suggested what factors could be interfered with to improve medical students’ life satisfaction during the period. Therefore, the present study fills the research gap and we constructed a sequential mediation model, in addition to two mediation models and a direct pathway.…”

“…Especially, postgraduate medical students are the future big part of people fighting the pandemic against the COVID-19, which means they have more mental and psychological distress ( Safa et al., 2021 ). There have been several studies that have attempted to link the decline in life satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic to a number of factors, but these studies either did not address the medical student population ( Karakose et al., 2021 ) or did not explore the specific causes of the decline in life satisfaction of medical students ( Bolatov et al., 2021 ; Nikolis et al., 2021 ), which means that it would be difficult to develop psychological intervention programs to improve the mental health status of medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic based on the phenomenon of declining life satisfaction among medical students. For example, medical students need to study at home and need to balance online course study tasks as well as research tasks, and may face double pressure from academics and family.…”

Changing Undergraduate Medical Students’ Perception of Online Learning and Assessment During the Covid-19 Pandemic: a One Year Follow-up Study

“…We believe that this is the first study exploring the changing perceptions of undergraduate medical students towards online learning and assessment during the COVID-19 pandemic in a longitudinal manner. Cross-sectional studies on this subject have repeatedly highlighted the adverse effects of the pandemic on medical students' mental health and their clinical training, and the challenges of sustaining an online learning environment (11)(12)(13)(14)(15)(16)(17). However, it is less clear how these issues might evolve with time.…”