Assessment of personality disorders in students appearing for medical school entrance examination.

OBJECTIVE: : To investigate personality disorders in medical students appearing for medical school entrance exam. METHODS: The cross-sectional study was conducted at Peshawar Medical College from August 2015 to May 2016, and comprised all the students who undertook medical school entrance examination of the College. They were asked to fill screening questionnaire of international personality disorder examination, based on International Classification of Disease version-10. Demographic information was collected from the application form. After screening of all the medical students during the entrance exam, detailed interview was taken from the students who were invited for admission interview. The data was analyzed using SPSS 20. RESULTS: There were 1334 subjects with a mean age of 18.91.41 years. Of the total, 745(55.8%) were male students. The most common personality traits were anankastic 1170(88%), schizoid 932(70%) and dependent 705(53%). Of the total, 322(24%) students were called for interview. The mean age of the interview sample was 18.91.03 years and 189 (58.7%) of them were females. Definite personality disorders in order of frequency were dependent 3(0.93%), schizoid 2(0.62%) and anankastic 1(0.31%). There was a significant correlation of female gender with histrionics, anxious, dependent and borderline personality disorder (p<0.05). There was a significant correlation between academic performance and dissocial, impulsive and borderline personality disorder separately (p<0.05). CONCLUSIONS: Anankastic, schizoid and dependent personality traits and disorders were the commonest on screening and detailed interview.

Psychological distress in students appearing for the medical school entrance examination in Peshawar.

OBJECTIVE: To explore psychological distress in terms of depression, anxiety, social dysfunction, depressive and somatic symptoms among students appearing for medical school entrance examination. METHODS: The cross-sectional study was conducted at Peshawar Medical College, Peshawar, Pakistan, from August 2015 to May 2016, and comprised all students who appeared in the written test. The subjects were asked to fill the General Health Questionnaire for the evaluation of psychological distress. Those who scored 24 and more and were called for the entrance interview were further assessed on Hamilton R ating Scale for Depression. SPSS 20 was used for data analysis.. RESULTS: Of the 1334 subjects, 745(55.8%) were males and 589(44.2%) were females. The mean age was 18.9±1.41 years and 182(13.6%) subjects had psychological distress. On the four subscales of the questionnaire, 472 (35.4%) students had somatic symptoms, 560 (42%) had anxiety/insomnia, 819 (61.4%) had social dysfunction and 323 (24.2%) had depressive symptoms. Amongst the 322(24%) students who were called for interviews, 73(22.7%) had psychological distress based on the questionnaire and 9 (2.8%) had depression on the Hamilton scale. There was a significant correlation between female gender and psychological distress based on the questionnaire scores (p<0.05). Among those who had both the assessments, there was no significant gender-based correlation (p>0.05). No significant correlation was found between academic performance and either of the assessment tools (p>0.05 each). CONCLUSIONS: A significant proportion of students at the medical school entrance examination level had psychological distress.

Do We Need To Care: Emotional Intelligence And Empathy Of Medical And Dental Students.

BACKGROUND: Biomedical knowledge, though pre-requisite, needs to be supported by other important skills, in order to transform medical education and healthcare delivery. This study was thus planned to analyze the correlation between emotional intelligence (EI) and empathy in medical and dental undergraduate students.. METHODS: This cross-sectional correlational study was conducted at public and private sector medical and dental institutions of Peshawar, Pakistan from February 2015 to June 2017. Schutte Emotional Intelligence Scale (SEiS) & Davis' Interpersonal Reactivity Index (IRI) were used to assess emotional intelligence and empathy. The data was analyzed using SPSS-20. The p-value of <0.05 was considered significant when tests of significance were applied. RESULTS: The mean age of the sample (n=2170) was 21.02±1.62 years. High level of EI (118.60±15.78) was reported in 1191 (54.9%) while higher empathy (63.24±14.24) was reported in 1115 (51.4%) students. Female medical students had significantly higher empathic behaviour and emotional intelligence than male students (p<0.05), while no significant difference was found between male and female dental students. Medical students of private sector showed higher level of empathy as compared to public sector (p<0.05), whereas dental students of private sector showed higher level of emotional intelligence as compared to public sector (p<0.05). EI and Empathy had significant correlation (r=.370, p=0.000). CONCLUSIONS: The study showed that EI and empathy have strong correlation. Since higher levels of both have been reported in only half of the students, therefore, there is a need to work on EI of students to improve in their empathetic behaviour..