Perceived Stress, Sources and Severity of Stress among Physiotherapy Students in an Indian College

Objective: To study the Perceived stress in physiotherapy students as per questionnaire along with assessment of corroborative clinical parameters and perceived stress score.

Method: A cross-sectional, questionnaire based survey was carried out among undergraduate physiotherapy students of Padmashree Dr. D. Y. Patil college of physiotherapy, Pune, India. Perceived stress was assessed using the perceived stress scale (PSS 10). A 27-item questionnaire was used to assess sources of stress and their severity. Another 11-item questionnaire was used to find possible institutional stress reducing factors.

Results: Of the physiotherapy students who were administered the questionnaire, 71 (74%) respondents participated in this study. The mean age ± standard deviation (SD) of the study participants was 19.39 ± 1.12 years, with a range of 18-23 years. Out of the 71 students, 57 (80.3%) were female students and 14 (19.7%) were male students. The mean PSS score was 20.50 (SD 5.96). The main sources of stress were found to be related to physical, emotional and academic factors. The main institutional stress reducing factors were picnics (59.2%), vacations (56.3%), interaction with friends (52.1%), and personal hobbies (54.9%).

Conclusion: High levels of perceived stress were found in Physiotherapy students. The physical, emotional and academic factor causes stress in little to great extent.