Stress and coping styles are associated with severe fatigue in medical students.
Fatigue is a common complaint among medical students and researchers consider it to be related to poor academic outcomes. The authors' goal in the present study was to determine whether stress and coping strategies were associated with fatigue in medical students. The study group consisted of 73 second-year healthy students attending the Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine. Participants completed a questionnaire about fatigue (Japanese version of Chalder Fatigue Scale), stress, stress coping (Japanese version of the Coping Inventory for Stressful Situations), overwork, and nocturnal sleeping hours. On univariate and multivariate logistic regression analyses adjusted for age and gender, stress was positively associated with fatigue. In addition, after adjustment for age, gender, and emotion- and task-oriented stress coping activities, avoidance-oriented stress coping activity was associated with fatigue. The results suggest that stress and the coping style are correlated with fatigue in medical students.
Tanaka
Masaaki
M
Department of Physiology, Osaka City University Graduate School of Medicine, Abeno-ku, Osaka City, Osaka, Japan. masa-t@msic.med.osaka-cu.ac.jp
Fukuda
Sanae
S
Mizuno
Kei
K
Kuratsune
Hirohiko
H
Watanabe
Yasuyoshi
Y
D000223:Adaptation, Psychological / Q000502:physiology*; D001362:Avoidance Learning; D003430:Cross-Sectional Studies; D005221:Fatigue / Q000150:complications / Q000523:psychology*; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D016015:Logistic Models; D008297:Male; D012016:Reference Values; D012720:Severity of Illness Index; D012917:Social Adjustment; D013315:Stress, Psychological / Q000150:complications* / Q000523:psychology; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D016526:Workload / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult