Perceived Stress among Undergraduate Students in a Dental College: A Descriptive Cross-sectional Study

INTRODUCTION: An individual may feel stressed when he/she is unable to cope with past, present, and future situations. A high level of stress in dental students is due to the fact that dental students need to acquire diverse proficiencies such as theoretical knowledge, clinical competencies, and interpersonal skills. So, this study was conducted to find out the prevalence of perceived stress among undergraduate students in a dental college. METHODS: A descriptive cross-sectional study was conducted among first-year to final year students of a tertiary care centre from July 2020 to August 2020. The sample size was calculated to be 177. Convenience sampling technique was used. Data collection was done after taking ethical approval from the institutional review committee (Ref no.21/020). Data collection was done by using a selfadministered, modified Dental Environmental Stress Questionnaire. Data analysis was done by using Statistical Package of Social Sciences version 20 software. Point estimate at 95% Confidence Interval was calculated along with frequency and proportion for binary data. RESULTS: The prevalence of perceived stress was found to be 80.55 (45%) at 95% Confidence Interval (37.71-52.28). Students perceived more stress from the domain related to personal factors i.e. fear of failing 78 (43.6%), academic factors i.e. examination and grades 71 (39.7%), unable to catch up with the back lock work 68 (38%), and for the clinical phase students, patients not coming or coming too late was most stressful 69 (60%) followed by getting an ideal case for clinical examination 60 (52.2%). CONCLUSIONS: Overall stress levels were slight to severe and were comparatively higher in clinical phase students due to factors related to patients.