Perceived causes of stress among Saudi dental students

Dental education programs must make every effort to balance the demands of academic and clinical training of students, provide a reasonable quality of life and adequately prepare them for the continuing stress involved in the profession. This challenge has led to considerable interest in identifying sources of stress for students in dental education programs. Our study was structured with a prime objective of determining the perceived causes of stress among undergraduate dental students of the academic year 2009–10, at the College of Dentistry, King Saud University, Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. Four hundred and twenty-five students participated with the overall response rate of 76.4%. This cross-sectional, questionnaire-based survey was carried out in the study population utilizing the 41-item modified Dental Environmental Stress (DES) scale, to assess the sources of stress and its severity. Descriptive statistics were calculated for severity and sources of stress. Results indicated that there was a positive recalibration of student perceptions in the areas of transition from preclinical to clinical level; “Performance pressure” stressed third year students the most. However, “Clinical requirements” was the greatest stressor with the highest mean for the fourth and fifth year students. The mean value of total DES score of female students is also statistically higher than that of male students (p < 0.05). The item scores “Patient treatment”, “performance pressure” and “social stressors” are significantly more stressful in married than in the single study subjects (p < 0.05). The overall findings of this investigation showed that dental students of King Saud University, perceived high levels of stress across all of the five study years with notable significance in the factor domain of “Workload”.