Abstract:

Background: Anxiety has been documented to highly affect medical students. In this thesis, factors contributing to its development amongst medical students, the burden, and its effects in the medical school students are all going to be discussed.

Objective: The aim of the study was to determine what is the prevalence of anxiety among undergraduate medical students at Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences (CUHAS) together with the factors that contribute to its development.

Methodology: The study design was cross sectional in nature using quantitative approach and it was conducted at Catholic University of Health and Allied Sciences.

Results: The results involved 310 participants amongst them 160(51.6) were males and the mean age of participants being 23.21(SD 2.46) years. The prevalence of anxiety was 65.5%. Among the variables; having a relative with anxiety(p=0.04), pressure to academically succeed(p=0.004), clinical rotations(p=0.000), being a third-year student(p=0.017), examinations fear(p=0.000) and having a health personnel parent(p=0.008) were all statistically significant in determining the prevalence of anxiety in medical students.

Conclusion: More than half of medical students suffer from anxiety. The high morbidity of anxiety should be addressed and treated or it can lead to severe burnouts, depressive co-morbid, poor results and quality of life and ultimately school dropouts or professional underdevelopment.

Limitation: The generalizability of the study results is limited by the characteristic of the sample, which was recruited only from one medical university (CUHAS). Also, since this is just a crosssectional study hence results from this study may not present the accurate picture of the situation therefore more studies should be done in the future to give a clear picture of the situation preferably a cohort study.