Medical education is perceived as being stressful, and a high level of stress may have a negative effect on cognitive functioning and learning of students in a medical school. This cross-sectional study was conducted to determine the prevalence of stress among medical students and to observe an association between the levels of stress and their academic performance, including the sources of their stress. All the medical students from year one to year five levels from the College of Medicine, King Saud University, were enrolled in the study. The study was conducted using Kessler10 psychological distress (K10) inventory, which measures the level of stress according to none, mild, moderate, and severe categories. The prevalence of stress was measured and compared with the five study variables, such as gender, academic year, academic grades, regularity to course attendance, and perceived physical problems. The response rate among the study subjects was 87% (n=892). The total prevalence of stress was 63%, and the prevalence of severe stress was 25%. The prevalence of stress was higher (p<0.5) among females (75.7%) than among males (57%) (odds ratio=2.3, χ2=27.2, p<0.0001). The stress significantly decreased as the year of study increased, except for the final year. The study variables, including being female (p<0.0001), year of study (p<0.001), and presence of perceived physical problems (p<0.0001), were found as independent significant risk factors for the outcome variables of stress. Students' grade point average (academic score) or regularity to attend classes was not significantly associated with the stress level. The prevalence of stress was higher during the initial three years of study and among the female students. Physical problems are associated with high stress levels. Preventive mental health services, therefore, could be made an integral part of routine clinical services for medical students, especially in the initial academic years, to prevent such occurrence.

The DREEM provides useful diagnostic information about medical schools, whether it is in developing or western developed countries.

Selection and recruitment into healthcare education and practice is a major area of endeavor for health professional educators. Key insights have emerged to guide further inquiry and influence future policy and practice since the last Ottawa consensus statement on selection (Prideaux et al., 2011). However, much remains to be done, not only in refining the science of selection, but also in considering the opportunities and challenges of translating current research understandings into established practice. This updated consensus statement is based on strong theoretical research evidence and was developed using a multi-stage process. First, a group of international researchers with expertise in selection and recruitment, assessment, curriculum, and educational theory was specially convened to critically appraise the literature and develop a draft consensus statement. Second, the group shared the draft statement with the wider community via a workshop and symposium at the 2018 Ottawa-ICME Joint Conference on the Assessment of Competence in Medicine and the Healthcare Professions, and at the Second International Conference of Selection into the Health Professions. Colleagues from diverse countries and regions actively engaged with these activities face-to-face and through social media. Finally, the statement was refined on the basis of feedback, questions and comments, sent for independent peer review, and further revised. Reflecting the state of the science at the time, the previous consensus (Prideaux et al., 2011) characterised selection as an assessment system and focussed on the quality of different selection methods. In this updated statement, we present the latest research findings on selection methods and, reflecting progression within the field, we also consider potentially more complex issues including: selection policies; methodological concerns (beyond psychometric issues); social accountability, diversity and fairness, workforce shortages in some specialities (e.g. General Practice and Psychiatry) and in certain contexts (e.g. remote and rural working, and emerging countries), globalisation issues, developments in theory, and evaluation frameworks. We conclude with a synthesis of the key issues and a series of recommendations to guide future research and practice and encourage debate between colleagues across the globe. Our findings are

Addressing these factors, which might be unique for a given student community, in a systematic manner would be helpful to improve students' performance.

BackgroundThere is a need to better understand the depression phenomenon and to clarify why some students become depressed and others don’t. The purpose of this study was to compare the prevalence of depressive symptoms among health professions’ (HP) students, and to explore the association between socio-demographic factors (e.g. year of study, discipline, gender) and depressive symptoms.MethodsIn this descriptive–analytic, cross-sectional study, stratified proportionate sampling strategy was used to select the study sample during the academic year 2012–2013. The students from four health professions’ schools situated within a large, public university located in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia were screened for depressive symptoms using the 21-item Beck Depression Inventory (BDI II). Chi-square test, student t-test and ANOVA were used to compare different categorical variables.ResultsThe overall response rate was 79.0 %, the highest among dental students 86.1 %, and lowest among nursing (49.7 %). The overall prevalence rate of depressive symptoms was 47.0 %; it was highest among dentistry students (51.6 %), followed by medicine (46.2 %), applied medical sciences (AMS) (45.7 %) and lowest among nursing students (44.2 %). A statistically significant association was found between the presence and severity of depressive symptoms on one hand and the female gender (p = 0.000) and year of study on the other hand.ConclusionThis study seems to indicate an alarming rate of depressive symptoms. Female gender, dentistry, the third year for all schools and fifth year for medicine and dentistry have the highest association with depressive symptoms. Future studies may be needed to explore further the reasons and explanations for the variation in the prevalence of depressive symptoms among these groups. The factors that deserve exploration include curricular variables and personal factors such as the students’ study skills.Electronic supplementary materialThe online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12909-016-0794-y) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users.