Accepted for/Published in: Journal of Medical Internet Research
Date Submitted: Dec 23, 2020
Open Peer Review Period: Dec 23, 2020 - Jan 4, 2021
Date Accepted: Jan 31, 2021
Date Submitted to PubMed: Feb 8, 2021
(closed for review but you can still tweet)
Impact of the COVID-19 Pandemic on Psychological Distress of Medical Students: A Japanese Cross-Sectional Survey
ABSTRACT
Background:
The COVID-19 pandemic has negatively affected medical education. However, few data are available about medical students' distress during the pandemic.
Objective:
This study aimed to provide details on how medical students had been affected by the pandemic.
Methods:
Cross-sectional study. 717 medical students participated in the web-based survey. The questions included how their mental status had changed before and after the Japanese nationwide state of emergency (SOE).
Results:
65.9% (473/717) participated in the study. 29.8% (141/473) reported concerns about the shift toward online education, mostly because they thought online education could have been ineffective compared with in-person learning. Participant's subjective mental health status significantly worsened after the SOE was lifted (p <.001). Those who had concerns about a shift toward online education had higher odds of having generalized anxiety and being depressed (OR 1.97, 95% CI 1.19 - 3.28), as did those who requested food aid and mental health care resources (OR 1.99, 95% CI 1.16 - 3.44; OR 3.56, 95% CI 2.07 - 6.15, respectively).
Conclusions:
Given our findings, the sudden shift to online education might have overwhelmed medical students. Thus, we recommend educators to inform learners that online learning is non-inferior to in-person learning, which could attenuate potential depression and anxiety.
Citation
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Copyright
© The authors. All rights reserved. This is a privileged document currently under peer-review/community review (or an accepted/rejected manuscript). Authors have provided JMIR Publications with an exclusive license to publish this preprint on it's website for review and ahead-of-print citation purposes only. While the final peer-reviewed paper may be licensed under a cc-by license on publication, at this stage authors and publisher expressively prohibit redistribution of this draft paper other than for review purposes.