The relationship between spirituality and anxiety caused by Covid 19 during clinical education in paramedical students

The high prevalence of Covid 19 and rumors on social media about it have caused many psychological problems, including anxiety in communities. It has also shown that spirituality is inversely related to anxiety. Therefore, the present study was conducted to investigate the relationship between spirituality and anxiety caused by Covid 19 in paramedical students.

In this descriptive cross-sectional study, 200 undergraduate students of Gonabad University of Medical Sciences participated in the study in 1400 through online calling and Porsline and answered the spiritual health questionnaires of Palutzian-Elison and Spielberger. SPSS software version 20 and statistical Methods of Mann-Whitney, Kruskal-Wallis, and Spearman-Brown correlation coefficients were used to analyze the data.

The results of the study showed that anxiety has an inverse relationship (r=-0.340) with spirituality. The majority of students (93%) had low anxiety and none of them had severe anxiety. The spirituality of most students (80%) was at a desirable level. In addition, female students had more anxiety (p=0.022) and eighth-semester students had less anxiety (p=0.020). Also, eighth-semester students had higher spirituality than other semesters (p=0.002).

Most paramedical students had little anxiety and the spirituality of most students was at a desirable level. Anxiety had a significant and inverse relationship with spirituality, meaning that the higher the spirituality, the lower anxiety, and vice versa. Researchers suggest that by designing programs to increase studentschr('39') spirituality, they reduce their stress and anxiety in situations such as the Corona pandemic.