Sree T. Sucharitha1, Balaji Sivaram Mahendran2, Chakrapani Chatla3, Aravind Manoharan4, Pradeep R.5
BACKGROUND
Severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS-CoV-19) popularly known as COVID-19
is an emerging pandemic which resulted in varying degrees of lockdown in India.
Medical undergraduates remain affected due to lockdown-imposed disruptions in
medical education, an unprecedented event, which can cause significant academic
stress in addition to psychological stress. Understanding the coping methods is
essential to develop interventions and to minimise the adverse effects of stress
during pandemics. We wanted to determine the major coping methods using
French version of the Brief Coping Orientation to Problems Experienced (COPE), a
novel 4 - factor structure among medical undergraduates of a private tertiary
teaching institution during COVID-19 lockdown period and describe the selfmanagement
of the stress as verbatim narrative statements.
METHODS
A cross-sectional, web-based survey based on French version of the Brief COPE, a
novel 4-factor structure was used to assess the major coping methods among
medical undergraduates of a private, tertiary care teaching medical institution in
Chennai, South India. Self-management of stress was documented verbatim as
narrative statements. After obtaining approval from institutional ethical committee
and informed consent, the web-survey data from Google forms was collected from
223 medical undergraduate students and analysed using STATA (V 12.0) statistical
package. The strategies for self-management of stress were identified and
classified into themes.
RESULTS
Among total 223 respondents, 132 (59.2 %) were female medicos and 88 (39. 5
%) males, and mean age was 20.36 (SD +_1. 43) years. Major coping method
adopted was positive thinking (115, 51.6 %), followed by avoidance (44, 19.7 %),
seeking social support (37, 16.6 %) and problem solving (19, 8.5 %). Students
with positive thinking had high levels of managing stress very well (33 %) followed
by avoidance (10 %) compared to other methods but there was no significant
difference in the self-rating of coping between different coping methods.
CONCLUSIONS
The coping mechanism of medical undergraduates reveals positive outlook while
experiencing COVID-19 pandemic related extended lockdowns.
