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Assessing medical student wellness - a national survey

Cite this dataset

Karl, Jamie (2024). Assessing medical student wellness - a national survey [Dataset]. Dryad. https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gjbq

Abstract

There is increasing recognition of the importance of medical student wellbeing. The purpose of this study was to determine the characteristics that are associated with lower wellness in medical students. An anonymous, IRB-approved survey was distributed to medical students across the United States. Students were asked to rate their response to different statements regarding wellness on a scale from 1 to 10 with 1 indicating “Strongly Disagree” and 10 indicating “Strongly Agree”. For statistical analyses, the Wilcoxon rank-sum test or Kruskal-Wallis test was applied. A statistical significance level of 0.05 was used for analysis. From November 2022 to February 2024, 370 medical students across the United States responded to this survey (response rate of 0.03%). Most respondents were women (n=259, 70%), White (n=164, 44%), first- and second-year medical students (n=107, 29%, n=98, 24%, respectively), and interested in internal medicine, a surgical subspecialty, or pediatrics (n=62, 17%, n=58, 16%, n=42, 11%, respectively). There are statistically significant different experiences of burnout based on the year of training in medical school (p<0.001) with third-year students having increased feelings of burnout, followed by their peers in a specified research year. Medical students living in the Midwest identified most strongly with being a workaholic compared to their peers living in other regions of the country (p=0.01). A medical student’s specialty of interest influenced their confidence in matching their chosen specialty (p=0.003). There are no statistically significant differences in wellness between men and women or among different races. There are statistically significant differences in medical student wellness based on year of training and specialty interest. Our study suggests that additional resources and support may be helpful for students in their clinical or research years, or those interested in certain specialties.

README: Assessing medical student wellness - a national survey

https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.cz8w9gjbq

This dataset contains responses to an anonymous, IRB-approved survey sent to medical students across the country. The survey included demographic information and students' responses to various questions regarding their medical school experience. 

Description of the data and file structure

The data is structured so that each row is an individual response. A researcher could analyze the data to see what demographic factors are related to various survey responses. 

There are certain questions on the survey that respondents could respond "NA" to if the question did not apply to them. For example, the last question on the survey asks,

If you are an MS4, do you feel ready to be a doctor and take care of patients next year as an intern?

Students who were not MS4s while responding to the survey responded "NA". 

There are also empty cells in the database. This indicates that the individual did not respond to this specific question. There is missing data for several of the participants. We left these cells empty to distinguish between individuals who responded "NA" to a specific question (as described above) and individuals who did not answer a specific question. 

Several of the indirect identifiers have been removed to protect respondent confidentiality. If you are interested in receiving the entire dataset, please feel free to contact Jamie Karl for more information at jamie.karl@duke.edu. 

Sharing/Access information

N/A

Code/Software

R version 4.2.3 was used to run the files. The dplyr package was used to run the files.