The impact of COVID-19 pandemic and psychological resilience among undergraduate medical students

Abstract

Pandemic always has negative impact on students in higher education. Especially when learning emphasises on hands-on experience. Due to movement The social distancing and online teaching during COVID-19 pandemic had impact on student learning, We aimed to assess the prevalence of anxiety, depression and resilience of medical students to COVID-19 related worries during pandemic.We conducted a cross-sectional study among 1200 undergraduate medical students. The survey questionnaires has six parts; demography information, modified version of COVID-19 related worries, the impact of COVID-19 in teaching and learning, resilience using the Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale, generalized anxiety disorder 7-item (GAD-7) scale & lastly patient health questionnaire-2 (PHQ-2). The Cronbach’s alpha coefficient of GAD-7 was 0.930 and PHQ-2 was 0.811. We used multiple linear regression to determine the association between resilience and anxiety, depression, and COVID-19 related worries. All the statistical tests were two-sided, and the level of significance was set at 0.05. Most of the students showed a moderate amount of COVID-19 related worries about contracting, dying or unintentionally infecting others, having financial burden following pandemic, affecting their study. Around 32.8% of the medical students had minimal anxiety while 35.7% had mild, 14.1% had moderate and 17.4% had severe anxiety disorder. The mean resilience score was 23.1 (SD 7.3). There was statistically significant negative association between resilience and anxiety with regression coefficient of -0.36 (95% confidence interval -0.43 to -0.29), P<0.001. Female students had significantly higher anxiety (regression coefficient 2.03; 95% confidence interval 0.92 to 3.15; P<0.001) and COVID-19 related worries (regression coefficient 2.91; 95% confidence interval 1.48 to 4.35; P<0.001) than male students.A significant proportion of medical students experienced anxiety and depressive symptoms, with varying degrees of severity. We emphasize the need for targeted support and interventions to address anxiety, depression, and promote resilience.