Quality of life among medical students during Covid-19 pandemic

Medicine has a well-known reputation for being among the toughest courses to enrol in once a student step into college or university. Given the mounting pressure to excel in a high stake learning environment, undeniably their quality of life could be affected. With the added challenge of navigating online learning during a pandemic, the students’ well-being has become an issue of great concern. Therefore, this study aimed to evaluate the quality of life among preclinical medical students of International Islamic University Malaysia during COVID-19. We conducted an observational cross-sectional study involving 77 Year 1 and 81 Year 2 IIUM medical students to answer a self-administered online survey. We used the Abbreviated World Health Organisation Quality of Life (WHOQOL-BREF) questionnaire to assess the students’ quality of life. We analysed the data using IBM SPSS Statistics 26 (IBM, New York). This study lasted from July till August 2021 under the approval of the institutional research committee (Research ID: 735). From this study, the mean score for overall quality of life was 14.58 (3.23), with no significant difference between Year 1 and Year 2 students (p=0.216). The average score across all four domains ranged between 12.19 (2.53) and 15.3 (2.43), indicating that they had a positive outlook on their well-being. Psychological health scored the lowest whereas environmental health was the highest. Looking into the individual items, the ability to concentrate scored the lowest [10.68 (2.73)]. We concluded that IIUM medical students reported good quality of life even at the height of the pandemic. This finding is likely due to the practice of adequate coping skills among the students to survive learning under lockdown. Nevertheless, we should pay due attention to some parameters, especially their psychological health i.e., focus and concentration, and intervene early to prevent further decline in quality of life