Effects of meditation to stress reduction in medical students

Abstract

Background: Stress is one of the most important issues found among medical students. Many studies have been reported that medical school practices are a prevalent cause of anxiety and emotional stress in medical students. The major causes of stress relate to the students’ course works and family problems. A high level of stress may have a negative effect on cognitive functioning and learning in medical students. Since it has shown that meditation could result in muscle relaxation throughout the body, meditation can be used to lower that stress level as a whole. This can be useful in the development learning abilities of medical students. The purpose of this research was to determine whether meditation could reduce the stress level of
the medical students at Nakornping Medical Education Center.
Objective: To study the effects of meditation on stress reduction in the fourth and fifth year medical students.
Design: Experimental research one group pretest-posttest design                                                              Summary of work: Demographic data, stress factors and stress management techniques werecollected from every subject. The research was conducted at Wat Tam DoiTohn (DoiTohn Buddhism monastery) in which a research designed experimental group consisting of 19 medical students (9 forth-year and 10 fifth-year medical students) participated in the 3-day meditation course. Then, the stress level was interpreted using the Suanprung Stress Test-20, which
measures the level of stress in four categories: mild, moderate, high and severe stress levels. The students were subjected to take the test before and after attending the meditation course. Afterwards, the stress test scores were compared.
Summary of results: There are 19 subjects in total consisting of 4 males and 15 females. The average age of the subjects is 30.7 years old in which 36% lives in urban areas while 64% lives in the suburbs and rural regions. It is reported that the stress factors of the subjects mainly relate to academic activities such as course works, interpersonal relationship, and school regulations. This factor is 58% of the overall stress factor while another 26% is due to family and finance and the final 16% is due to the environment. In regards to how the students cope with stress, the survey shows that 47.5% deals with stress by means of recreational activities such as reading, playing games, watching movies and listening to music, 47.5% coping by accepting the truth and seeking social support while only 5% copes by meditation. The test results before attending the
meditation course showed that most of student (64%) had moderate stress, 26% had high stress, 5% had severe stress and 5% had mild stress. The mean score of the stress test before and after attending the meditation course is 42.21 and 36.95, respectively. The result of the Suanprung Stress Test-20 proves that the stress level of the pre- and post-test reduces with the significance of P=0.029 Discussion and                conclusion: The result of the Suanprung Stress Test-20, which the subjects took before and after attending the meditation course, shows significant decrease of stress. It is evident that meditation can serve as another mean of coping with stress. In this research we investigated the short-term effects of meditation on the stress level where the students were subjected to the 3-day meditation course. It might be beneficial for the future researchers to conduct long-term effects of mindfulness training for medical and pre-medical students.
Take-home message: The 3 day meditation course is an effective method for managing stress in
medical students