Anxiety levels of medical students during COVID-19 outbreak

Abstract

As Covid-19 spread to many countries in a very short time and became a global epidemic, WHO declared the epidemic as a \"pandemic\" on March 11, 2020. In respiratory diseases such as Covid-19, the transmission rate of the disease is high and the highest risk has always been healthcare workers during pandemic periods. Our aim the pres- ent study is to measure medical students anxiety levels and the different variables affecting their anxiety during unusual Covid-19 outbreak. A cross-sectional study was conducted on medical students. Coronavirus Anxiety Scale and the Beck Anxiety Inventory tests applied to all students. An online-based platform was used to distribute the survey developed by using the Google Forms. A total of 370 medical students participated in the survey. In this study 67.3 % (n = 249) of the participants were female and 32.7 % (n = 121) were male. 55.7 % (n = 206) of the participants were preclinical students, 44.4 % (n = 164) were clinical students. There was a statistically significant difference in anxiety levels according to gender and grades. We found that the prevalence of severe anxiety was higher in female students than in male students. Compared to clinical stage, preclinical students had a higher anxiety level according to BAI scores. Determining the anxiety levels of medical students and offering possible solutions for this is of vital importance as a healthy workforce will be maintained future global outbreaks.