فهرست مطالب ehsan khazaei

The prevalence of the COVID-19 pandemic has caused significant psychological and health disorders in individuals, such as some health care behaviors disturbance and anxiety disorder.

This study aimed to assess Iranian medical students’ anxiety level and self-care behaviors during the COVID-19 outbreak.

The anonymous online questionnaire was applied to collect data, including three general sections on the socio-demographical characteristics, COVID-19 self-care behaviors, and coronavirus anxiety scale. Totally, 620 students of the Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery of Mashhad University of Medical Sciences with access to the Internet were surveyed from May 23 to July 7, 2020.

The mean scores of self-care behaviors and anxiety levels were 56.71 ± 7.63 and 16.84 ± 3.75, respectively. The self-care behaviors were higher among female, married, and PhD candidates and infected students living in rural areas than other students (P < 0.05). The level of anxiety was significantly higher among male, single, and infected students living in metropolitan areas (P < 0.05). There was a significant negative relationship between self-care behaviors and anxiety levels (r = -0.922, P < 0.001).

The finding showed suitable self-care behaviors and high anxiety levels in students. The universities should prepare a package of multi-dimensional interventions, such as designing comprehensive software to reduce anxiety and increase preventive behaviors, such as self-care behaviors in students.

Following the sudden and global outbreak of Coronavirus disease 2019 (Covid-19), called an infectious pandemic by the WHO, Iran also began fighting against this disease from February 19. One of the most important issues in this situation is the adherence to self-quarantine behaviors and its psychological impacts on community health. To date, it is not clear how the Iranian medical students have been adapted with self-quarantine neither and their psychological impacts. The purposes of this study were to investigate effect of self-quarantine on medical student’s behaviors and their psychological health during the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020.

During the early stage of the nationwide lockdown, a total 607 Iranian medical students (63.4% females, range 18-51 years), who were in self-quarantine, participated in an online cross-sectional survey. The valid and reliable questionnaires included covid-19 self-quarantine behaviors, general health (GHQ-28), and impact of events-revised (IES-R) were used to collect data. Series of analysis tests like t-tests, one way-ANOVA and Pearson's correlation coefficient were conducted via SPSS v.25.

The results indicated suitable behaviors (57.09±22.36) and higher-level of adherence in females and married students that there is no member in their family affected with COVID -19(P-value<0.05). Respondents exhibited significant levels of mental disturbance (29.33±16.11) and PTSD symptoms (28.96±15.40) and also Pearson correlation test indicated a significant positive correlation between self-quarantine behaviors with psychological disturbance and PTSD symptoms (r=0.208 and 0.215, P-value =0.01).

Despite observing the appropriate behaviors in students during self-quarantine, but significant psychological effects due to self-quarantine condition have affected them. The results of this study can help professional health policy makers to determine special strategies for promoting appropriate behaviors during COVID-19 pandemic self-quarantine, controlling the resulting psychological impacts in medical students who considered as one the most important academic population.