Correlation between regular physical activities with perceived stress in undergraduate medical students during Covid-19 pandemic

Abstract

The world wide spread of covid-19 has vexed the ordinariness of every human being's day to day life, forcing population to social distancing and self-isolation. Like the rest of the world, medical undergraduate students are suffering from stress. The objective of the study is to assess whether regular physical activity has any correlation with perceived stress scale (PSS) of medical undergraduate students during Covid-19 pandemic. The aim of the present study is to find out if regular physical activity has any correlation with perceived stress level in undergraduate medical students during Covid-19 pandemic. The present study was a questionnaire based cross-sectional study on perceived stress scale and International Physical Activity Questionnaire (IPAQ). Data were entered into SPSS software and Pearson's correlation was calculated for perceived stress with sex, age, year of M.B.B.S, place of residence, involvement in regular physical activity, duration, frequency per week and METs per week. Chi-square test was used to analyse categorical variables and P<0.01 was considered statistically significant. 183 undergraduate medical students participated in the study. Only 26.2% were involved in regular physical activities and 56.8% scored very high on PSS. The mean PSS score was 22.37±6.42. 66.7% of the respondents had less than 600 METs per week and scored low in IPAQ. Pearson's correlation was applied between PSS score and PA and it turned out to be -0.709 which signifies strong negative correlation between the variables. Based on the current study, it can be stated that those respondents involved in regular physical activities were found to perceive less stress than those without regular physical activities. Hence, it is recommended that medical students should be encouraged to partake in regular physical activities during this pandemic. © 2022. All Rights Reserved.