Impact of The COVID-19 Pandemic on Educational Crisis in Medical Students: Prevalence and Associated Factors

Background: Educational crisis causes medical students emotional stress and associated with increasing medical educational-related disillusionment and has never been clarified and gained attention secondary to concerns regarding study performance. COVID-19 pandemic has raised public health problems, Educational crisis and physical exhaustion have more pronounced. Medical students seem more exposed due to the prolong online study, less time to practice, and risk to contact with COVID-19 and had COVID-19 infection. The aim is to study the prevalence and related factors. Methods: Multicenter, prospective cross-sectional study. Educational crisis were collected from medical students in most epidemics covid-19 areas in Bangkok and southern areas using electronic questionnaires from February 2021 to January 2022. Educational crisis was defined when medical students exhibited at least 1 of 3 aspects (depersonalization, emotion exhaustion and personal accomplishment) and COVID-19 related stressors. Primary outcome was prevalence of educational crisis and secondary outcomes were risk factors. Results: Among 266 medical students, 11.6% had depression and 30.5% had COVID- 19 infection. Prevalence of educational crisis was 49.5% with the highest score found decreased personal accomplishment section (32.57 ± 7.79). The risk factors were COVID-19 infection, female, duration of clinical experience, poor sleep quality, conflict with co-worker, feeling that unfit and inappropriate to be doctor and feeling that they wanted resign from medical students within the past year. Conclusion: In this study, we found a high prevalence of educational crisis among medical students. Early prevention of mental health problems and psychological intervention should be conducted for medical students during the pandemic.