Hasan Abdulhussein | Majolaine T. Baldugo | Hanna Marie P. Bastian | Janine Rose M. Bugarin | Jacquiline P. Gruspe | Ma. Dona Clarisse T. Lintao | Princess Diane C. Martinez | Katrina P. Rivera | Princess Mina P. Sillano | Marc Prix A. Tabaniag
School of Dentistry
ABSTRACT
Due to the COVID-19 pandemic, both the clinical instructors and students are not able to utilize the facilities of their laboratories in the dental infirmary which led to learning difficulties among dental clinicians. Some of the students find working from home via online laboratory classes not beneficial to them as compared to what they can learn in the infirmary and the face-to-face classes. Most students find it challenging to learn, understand, and apply the clinical procedures by just merely reading it through modules or by instructions given through the internet. This conflict gives more emphasis to the most advantageous strategy for offline laboratory classes which is for students to perceive the procedures with face-to-face demonstration of the instructor and gain an approval or reaffirmation of their works instantly and personally. With that, this research aimed to determine the level of psychological stress among the student clinicians of the University of Baguio undergoing the clinical enhancement program. It also aimed to compare the level of psychological stress among the clinical levels. This paper evaluated and compared the different levels of psychological stress of the University of Baguio dentistry clinicians who were undergoing the clinical enhancement program during the pandemic. The population involved 90 representative clinicians of DMD 5 and 6, under categories of clinics 1, 2, 3 and 4. The perceived stress scale or PPS developed by Sheldon Cohen was utilized to measure the levels of psychological stress among the clinicians. The independent sample t-test was used to compare the stress levels of the junior and senior clinicians. The clinicians undergoing the clinical enhancement program experienced moderate level of stress while undergoing the clinical enhancement program. This poses a need to give attention to the psychological well-being of the clinicians, considering that they have not fully adapted to the abrupt changes in the clinical learning set-up. Both junior and senior clinicians experienced the same level of stress. Clinical level did not significantly affect the stress level of the clinicians.
Keywords: Psychological stress, Clinical Enhancement Program, junior clinicians, senior clinicians, Covid19 pandemic
