Behavioral treatment of debilitating test anxiety among medical students

Abstract

This article presents and illustrates the behavioral treatment of medical students and physicians whose debilitating test anxiety was associated with their failure to pass the United States Medical Licensing Examination (USMLE) or a specialty board test. Seventy-two medical trainees were treated consecutively because of at least one failure to pass these professional examinations. Behavioral treatment focused on their anxiety, which resulted in the "dual deficits" of poor test preparation, poor test performance, or both. Treatment featured progressive muscle relaxation, systematic desensitization, the self-control triad, behavioral rehearsal, and a psychoeducational component. Ninety-three percent of the clients eventually passed the examination while in treatment. Pass rates for this group were substantially higher than the national average for repeat USMLE test takers. Limitations of this treatment method are that it seemed too elaborate for some medical trainees and was less effective with those who had difficulty evoking anxiety.

Factors That Affect Academic Performance Among Pharmacy Students

“…15,16 In this study the time management domain was operationalized as the ability of students to juggle leisure and study time to prepare for their examinations. 3 Test anxiety is negatively associated with academic performance.…”

Internal factors Affecting Academic Performance among Pharmacy Students in Malaysian Public Institutions of Higher Learning

“…22 Academic competence, test competence, time management skills and test anxiety were found to be the important factors which might help to distinguish students with different ranks of CGPA (academic performance). This indicates that students with good academic competence, 5 high test competence, 1 good time management skills 12 and low test anxiety 20 will achieve higher CGPA. This is supported by the results of this study which showed that students with excellent academic performance had the highest academic and test competence, best time management skills and lowest test anxiety among students with all ranks of CGPA.…”

“…5,[9][10][11][12][13] Many students reported that they had difficulty organising their study and leisure time. This may be attributed to the extensive course load and stress associated with examinations or tests.…”

El cambio terapeútico a través del modelo de asimilación : su aplicación en la terapia lingüística de evaluación = The therapeutic change through the assimilation model : it’s application in the linguistic therapy of evaluation

“…A pesar de esta diferencia, es factible la comparación puesto que, en ningún momensiderar como un subtipo de fobia social y se refi ere a miedos fuertes, pero delimitados, que difi cultan notablemente que el individuo realice una tarea en un nivel esperado, crucial para el ajuste normal de esa persona. La ansiedad de rendimiento se puede tratar desde perspectivas diversas como la terapia cognitiva (Rodebaugh y Chambless, 2004) o conductuales (Powell, 2004b), por ejemplo. En este caso se trató a Gabriel con la TLE durante 13 sesiones.…”