Abstract

Background: Covid-19 has emerged as an unexpected pandemic at the end of 2019. Being new to the world it brings about uncertainties and psychological stress, anxiety being a part of it. Medical students are a high-risk group prone to developing anxiety and the purpose of our study is to determine the severity of this anxiety and its sources. Methodology: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted among 300 students from 1st year to final year of Gujranwala medical college. A self-reporting questionnaire consisting of GAD-7 scale was sent online to the participants and the data was analyzed using SPSS version 22. Quantitative variables were expressed using frequencies and percentages. Graphs and tables were utilized where needed. Results: A total of 88 (32%) out of 272 students exhibited minimal anxiety, 105 (38%) showed mild anxiety, 54 (19%) moderate anxiety and 25 (9%) severe anxiety. The overall anxiety level of the participants was ‘mild’ with a GAD-7 mean score of 7.188 +/-3.49. Causative factors of anxiety included fear of being infected (53.80%) and bringing infection home (68.4%), stress regarding disconnection with friends and family (56.80%) and delay of the academic year (72.06%), worries related to effect on academic performance (69.12%) and acquisition of clinical skills (80.88%) Conclusion: Medical students are indeed facing anxiety and in these unforeseeable circumstances there is a dire need of counseling and provision of moral support to the students in order to maximize their performance in near future.