Stress among Medical Students in the Deep South of Thailand

Medicine has been widely known as a high stress profession and medical school is often where stress begins. Identifying the common stressors among the medical students in our Medical Education Center, would help the supervisors to develop the suitable curriculum structure. This study aims to investigate the perceived sources of stress among 4th and 5th year medical student at Medical Education Center, Yala Hospital, Thailand, and to compare if the student with different gender, religion and study year perceives the source of stress differently. A descriptive cross sectional quantitative study was conducted using a 40 items self administered questionnaire adapted from the Medical Student Stressor Questionnaire (MSSQ). The determinants are gender, religion and the study year. T-test was used for analyzing the difference in group. A 92.73% response rate was obtained. The results indicated that falling behind in reading schedule, test and examination, large amount of content to be learnt, national test exam, and lack of time to review what have been learnt were the first five commonest stressors for students. Interestingly, the Muslim students had significantly higher total stress scores than Buddhist students, and the fifth year students had significantly higher stress than the fourth year students. In contrast, gender did not associated with the total stress scores. Medical instructor should design and develop a curriculum structure which is enhancing the student?s well being and focus on academic and clinical performance for producing graduates with a positive professional attitude.