Symptoms caused by stress associated with academic tests in first year medi- cal students of the Faculty of Medical Sciences of the National University of Asuncion.

Abstract

Stress affects more and more medicine students and professionals. The covid-19 pandemic brought with it many changes, for example more stress awareness and more knowledge about the symptoms it can cause, also more ways to deal with it to avoid BurnOut syndrome. Due to the academic requirement of the Medicine degree, their students are being put through high levels of stress, which can cause both psychological and somatic symptoms for the student. The students must recognize the symptoms and which subjects and forms of evaluation generate more stress, in order to decrease it and, even better, to avoid it. An observational, descriptive and cross-sectional study was carried out, based on the results of a survey made by Google Forms to a total of 109 students who are in the first year of the Facultad de Ciencias Médicas de la Universidad Nacional de Asunción (UNA); the general objective was to determine the symptoms caused by stress associated to academic tests in students. The results showed that 39 of the respondents “often” feel more anxious before a test and 20 of the res- pondents ``always” feel more anxious and nervous than normally. Also, 40 respondents ``often” feel weaker and tired before a test. The subject which affects the stu- dents the most is anatomy, with their oral tests and midterms, closely followed by histology midterms. In short, the oral test methodology causes more stress.