Assessing stress and burnout in dental students in a dental institution

Background: Dental students feel stress in their professional education such as fear of examinations, burden of workload, stress in completion of academic course, and adjustment in college atmosphere. The objective of the study was to assess stress among dental students and its association with academic year of training and gender differences in perceived stress. Materials and Methods: A 31-item self-constructed Modified Garbee's Dental Environmental Stress Survey (1980) Questionnaire was distributed among students to obtain their stress response on a 4-point Likert scale with responses ranked: 1 – not stressful, 2 – slightly stressful, 3 – moderately stressful, and 4 – very stressful. Statistical analysis was done using the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 21.0, Armonk, NY, USA: IBM Corp. Results: Responses were obtained from 232 students; 74.2% were female and 24.6% were male. Top stressors were fear of failure, insecurity of future, stress of examinations, fear of excessive workload, assigned work burden, unavailability of clinical cases, the lack of time to complete work, less time for recreation, coping with competition among classmates, lack of confidence in career decision, receiving criticism of work from teachers, and the lack of confidence to be successful student. Less stressful responses were difficulty in learning preclinical procedures, learning environment created by faculty, the attitude toward faculty, relationship with colleagues, financial stress, impact on personal health, discrimination due to race, class, etc., The mean stress scores were more in preclinical years (BDS 1st and 2nd years) when compared to clinical years (BDS 3rd and 4th years). Stress perceived by female students outweighed male students. Conclusion: Therefore stress reduction strategies need to be incorporated in dental curriculum.