Strategies for coping with stress in Medicine course students at the Santa Clara De Asís University

Abstract

The evaluation of coping strategies used by university students is considered essential, given that they have relevant implications from an educational and clinical point of view, since the use of functional or productive strategies is related to greater well-being, quality of life, adaptation or adjustment in the university environment. The objective of this research is to analyze the stress coping strategies in students of the Medicine program at the Santa Clara de Asís University.Regarding the methodology used, the study was quantitative, descriptive, non-experimental, taking into account the participation of 227 students from the First to Sixth year belonging to the Medicine degree. The main results obtained were: of the total number of students, 87.5% use acceptance as a passive coping strategy; Of the active strategies, 88.1% use making more academic efforts; while 93.8% use worry as an avoidant coping strategy. It is concluded that the coping strategy that is most frequently used by medical students is the active or problem-focused one, yielding a total of 31.7%. The study also revealed that students not only use a single coping method; but sometimes they resort to a set of strategies, where it was found that the second most used strategy is a combination of active and passive strategies, with 22%.