Stress in Undergraduate Physiotherapy Students at KIPT

Purpose

The purpose of this study was to findout the intensity of stress in undergraduate (BPT) physiotherapy students and it's correlation with their academic performance. Design

Co-relational study design.

Setting

An undergraduate&postgraduate physiotherapytraining center named Karnataka Lingayat Education Society's Institute of Physiotherapy (KIPT), Belgaum, Karnataka state, India 590010. Participants

147 undergraduate physiotherapy students of 1 to 4th year&interns of Indian&Nepalese ethnic origin during 2008.

Interventions: Nil

Main outcome measures: Stress score.

Methods

Stress was measured with a nonspecific stress questionnaire with 20 questions so that maximum calculated stress score could be 100.

Results

The intensity of stress was in the range of 36 to 92 in undergraduate physiotherapy students and interns with an average of 64.11 ±10.62. There was no significant correlation between academic performance and stress score. Average stress scores among the undergraduate physiotherapy students of different academic years and interns did not vary significantly.

Conclusions

The data indicate that undergraduate physiotherapy students at KIPT suffer from high intensity of stress irrespective of their academic year in the institute and there is no correlation between academic performance in terms of their percentage of marks scored in previous academic year and stress. Consequently it is proposed that this physiotherapy institute could take appropriate steps for prevention of undue stress and thereby stress related problems.