- Research article
- Open Access
Perceived stress and quality of life of pharmacy students in University of Ghana
- Received: 29 October 2015
- Accepted: 24 February 2017
- Published: 2 March 2017
Abstract
Background
Stress among pharmacy students could greatly affect their learning activities and general well-being. It is therefore necessary to investigate how stress relates with the quality of life of students to maintain and/or improve their personal satisfaction and academic performance. A school-based longitudinal study was used to investigate the relationship between stress and quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. The 10-item perceived stress scale and the shorter version of the WHO quality of life scale were administered to the same participants at two time points i.e. Time 1 (4 weeks into the semester) and Time 2 (8 weeks afterwards). The correlations and differences between the study variables were tested using the Pearson’s coefficient and independent sample t test.
Results
The mean stress scores were higher at Time 2 compared to Time 1 for the first and second years. However, there was no significant difference in stress for different year groups—Time 1 [F (3) = 0.410; p = 0.746] and Time 2 [F(3) = 0.909; p = 0.439]. Female students had higher stress scores at Time 2 compared to male students. The main stressors identified in the study were; large volume of material to be studied (88.2%), laboratory report writing (78.2%), constant pressure to maintain good grades (66.4%) and the lack of leisure time (46.4%). Even though most students employed positive stress management strategies such as time management (68.2%), other students resorted to emotional eating (9.1%) and alcohol/substance use (1.8%). At Time 2, perceived stress scores were significantly negatively correlated with social relationship (r = −0.40, p ≤ 0.0001), environmental health (r = −0.37, p ≤ 0.0001), physical health (r = −0.49, p ≤ 0.0001) and psychological health (r = −0.51, p ≤ 0.0001).
Conclusion
The study reported significant correlations between stress and various domains of quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. It is thus necessary to institute some personal and institutional strategies to ameliorate the effect of stress on the quality of life of pharmacy students while encouraging the use of positive stress management strategies.
Keywords
- Stress
- Distress
- Quality of life
- Pharmacy
- Students
- Ghana
Background
Stress describes how a body reacts to external changes and is defined as “the non-specific response of the body to any demand for change” [1]. Stress can have both physical and psychological effects on individuals ranging from headaches, gastrointestinal discomfort, poor memory and difficulty with concentration [2].
Over the past few decades, stress among students has greatly increased with those in tertiary institutions being more liable [3–5]. The high level of stress has generally been attributed to the important academic and personal decisions these students usually make as they transit from adolescence into adulthood [6, 7].
Students of the health profession (medical, pharmacy, dental and nursing) have been reported to exhibit high levels of stress because of the nature of their educational process [8–10]. Pharmacy students demonstrate comparatively higher prevalence of stress than students of the other health professions which adversely affects their health and general quality of life [10]. Stress negatively affects the mental health of these students resulting in the development of stress-related disorders, low quality of life and poor academic performance [11–15]. In effect, some students may resort to certain strategies to alleviate stress. These interventions employed may affect quality of life affirmatively or negatively [10]. In view of this, some accreditation bodies for pharmacy education especially in the United States of America have recommended stress screening for their students to improve their performance academically [16].
In addition, previous studies on the stress among students of the health profession have predominantly been reported from the USA with emphasis on Doctor of Pharmacy students, as well as from other countries like the United Kingdom, United Arab Emirates, China, Malaysia and India [2, 6, 8, 11, 14, 17]. The relationship between high stress levels, low mental health-related quality of life and academic performance among pharmacy students have been reported [14, 17]. Yet, there is a dearth of information on stress and quality of life outcomes among pharmacy students in Ghana. To bridge this knowledge gap, the study sought to ascertain the relationship between stress and quality of life of pharmacy students, through the assessment of: (1) the experience and sources of stress among students at two time points of the semester, (2) the quality of life of students at two time points of the semester, (3) the correlation between perceived stress and quality of life of students, and (4) the stress management techniques used. The information obtained from the study will contribute to the literature on stress and quality of life of students in Ghana, which represents a sub-Saharan African country.
Methods
Study design and setting
This was a school-based longitudinal study using a paper survey to investigate the relationship between stress and quality of life of pharmacy students. Stress and quality of life were measured at two different periods within the semester at Time 1 (September 17 and 18, 2013) and Time 2 (November 5 and 6, 2013). The survey was conducted at a pharmacy school in Ghana.
Participants
The entire population of one hundred and fifty-four (154) undergraduate students were eligible for the study and were recruited, representing 28, 31, 47 and 48 students in 4th, 3rd, 2nd, and the 1st years respectively. A return rate of 71.4% was obtained because 44 students opted out of the study at both occasions.
Measures and procedure
A structured questionnaire was used in this study (Additional file 1) to gather information on socio-demographic characteristics, stress levels and quality of life of students. The extent to which participants viewed their lives as stressful, that is, overwhelming or unable to cope was measured using the 10-item perceived stress scale (Cronbach’s alpha of 0.82) [18–22]. The responses on the PSS vary from 0 to 4 and scored from 0 to 40 with higher scores indicating higher perceived stress. Items 4, 5, 7 and 8 on the PSS are positively worded and the scores were reversed [23]. The PSS is not a diagnostic instrument with no cut-off points hence comparisons were made within the sample.
The questionnaire also had a free-write section where the students were asked to list their most common stressors specific to pharmacy education and the coping techniques they employed. The various responses were content analyzed and presented descriptively.
In assessing the quality of life of participants, the shorter version of the WHO quality of life (WHOQOL-BREF) was used. It consists of twenty-six items (answered on a scale of 1–5) and measures four domains namely; physical health, psychological health, social relationships and environmental health with each domain having good psychometric properties [24]. Some facets incorporated into the physical health domain include activities of daily living, energy and fatigue, work capacity, sleep and rest. Some aspects of the psychological were negative feelings, positive feelings, self-esteem, bodily image and appearance. Personal relationships and social support were part of the social domain while financial resources, freedom, physical safety and security formed part of the facets under the environmental health. In scoring WHOQOL-BREF, items under a specific domain are separately scored with values ranging from 1 to 5. The sum up score for items in each domain was recorded as the raw domain score. Depending on the number of items present in a domain, the range of domain score varied. Per the guidelines, the raw domain scores were transformed to a 4–20 score which was comparable to the WHOQOL-100. The mean score of the items within each domain was used to calculate the domain score. This enabled the quality of life of participants under the various domains to be easily analyzed where higher scores denoted higher quality of life [25].
The questionnaires were administered in English to participants on two occasions within the semester. The first was 4 weeks after the resumption of school and 8 weeks after, to prevent the direct stressful impact of examinations from influencing the results [17]. The test retest reliability for the PSS after 6 weeks have been reliable [26].
The participants were given envelope sealed copies of the paper questionnaires in their lecture rooms. They responded in their own time and privacy and the sealed filled out questionnaires were collected the following day. The questionnaire did not have aspects that allowed for the personal identifiable information about the participants to ensure confidentiality. Additionally, the participants were given envelopes to contain the filled-out questionnaires. This was to ensure that reliability challenges with direct observational studies or the provision of socially desirable responses were minimized.
Ethics
Approval to conduct the study was given by the research committee and school authorities before the commencement of the data collection. Taking part in this study was by choice and all participants willing to be part of the study gave informed written consent after the study objectives had been clearly understood by them. Each participant was assigned a code to ensure anonymity of participants and confidentiality of the information obtained.
Data analysis
The data obtained were analyzed using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS-version 20). The Kolmogorov–Smirnov test for normality was not significant (p = 0.712). Missing data were replaced with mean scores of the variables. Comparison and correlations between stress and quality of life of students at Time 1 and 2 were conducted using independent samples t-test and the Pearson correlation tests respectively. Responses on the most common stressors specific to pharmacy education and the coping techniques used were structured, coded and content analyzed. The codes were generated from a careful selection of excerpts of the responses and organized into categories. These have been presented descriptively as frequencies and percentages. A pilot study was conducted involving two students from each year group to assess the appropriateness of the study tool and the questions were clear to all of them.
Results
Socio-demographic information of respondents
Item | Category | Frequency | Percentage (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
Gender | Male | 71 | 64.5 |
Female | 39 | 35.5 | |
Age (years) | 19 | 32 | 29.1 |
20–25 | 77 | 70.0 | |
>25 | 1 | 0.9 | |
Year of study | 1 | 25 | 22.7 |
2 | 39 | 35.5 | |
3 | 19 | 17.3 | |
4 | 27 | 24.5 |
Stress among students
Stress scores for year of study and gender
Time 1 | Time 2 | |
|---|---|---|
Mean (±SD) | Mean (±SD) | |
Year of study | ||
1 | 17.64 (7.199) | 18.43 (7.555) |
2 | 17.72 (5.862) | 19.41 (5.919) |
3 | 17.42 (5.60) | 17.32 (5.447) |
4 | 19.15 (6.311) | 17.00 (6.481) |
Gender | ||
Male | 17.85 (6.239) | 17.4 (5.193) |
Female | 18.29 (6.234) | 19.55 (7.712) |
Unlike male students whose mean stress levels varied minimally [Time 1 (mean = 17.85 ± 6.239) and Time 2 (mean = 17.40 ± 5.193)], female students had higher stress scores during the semester [Time 1 (mean = 18.29 ± 6.234) and Time 2 (mean = 19.55 ± 7.712)].
Perceptions of stress, stressors and coping
Stress | Frequency | % |
|---|---|---|
Perception of stress | ||
Pharmacy is stressful | 103 | 93.6 |
Stress affects academic performance | 74 | 67.3 |
Stress is manageable | 99 | 90.0 |
Employ management strategies | 97 | 88.2 |
Stressors | ||
Large study materials | 97 | 88.2 |
Laboratory report writing | 86 | 78.2 |
Pressure to maintain good grades | 73 | 66.4 |
Lack of leisure time | 51 | 46.4 |
Poor teaching quality | 6 | 5.5 |
Management strategies | ||
Time management | 75 | 68.2 |
Listening to music | 64 | 58.2 |
Time with family/friends | 57 | 51.8 |
Regular relaxation | 56 | 50.9 |
Emotional eating | 10 | 9.1 |
Alcohol and/or drug use | 2 | 1.8 |
Although 67.3% of the students recognized that stress affected their academic performance, the majority (90%) of the participants perceived their stresses as manageable. Stress management strategies were employed by 88.2% of the respondents which was mainly positive. These included time management (68.2%), regular relaxation (50.9), listening to music (58.2%) and spending time with families and/or friends (51.8%). However, some respondents used strategies which could negatively affect their health such as, emotional eating (9.1%) and alcohol/substance abuse (1.9%).
Quality of life of students
Quality of life scores for year of study and gender
Quality of life | Time 1 | Time 2 |
|---|---|---|
Mean (±SD) | Mean (±SD) | |
Year of study | ||
1 | 77.50 (12.938) | 80.43 (17.959) |
2 | 75.90 (14.639) | 78.21 (11.669) |
3 | 80.00 (11.055) | 85.26 (6.118) |
4 | 77.41 (12.888) | 81.48 (12.949) |
Gender | ||
Male | 76.06 (13.678) | 80.61 (11.077) |
Female | 79.74 (11.965) | 80.95 (15.588) |
Relationship between stress and quality of life
Overall perceived stress and quality of life (QoL)
Variable | Time 1 | Time 2 | t (j−k) | df | p-value | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Mean (j) | SD | Min–max | Mean (k) | SD | Min–max | ||||
Stress | 18.06 | 6.212 | 3–33 | 18.24 | 6.356 | 5–40 | −0.214 | 106 | 0.831 |
QoL | 77.34 | 13.169 | 30–100 | 80.74 | 12.949 | 20–100 | −1.868 | 107 | 0.065 |
Correlation between stress and different quality of life domains
QoL dimension | Time 1 | Time 2 | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|
r value | p-value | r value | p-value | |
Social relationship | 0.11 | 0.251 | −0.40 | ≤0.0001 |
Environmental health | −0.37 | ≤0.0001 | −0.37 | ≤0.0001 |
Physical health | −0.45 | ≤0.0001 | −0.49 | ≤0.0001 |
Psychological health | −0.55 | ≤0.0001 | −0.51 | ≤0.0001 |
Discussion
This study focused on the experience of stress and quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. Similar to observations made by Gallagher et al. [11], stress was reported among the participants though the difference in stress scores for various classes was insignificant. Unlike findings from other studies where statistically significant differences in stress were observed for various years of study [27, 28], our findings are corroborated in a study among undergraduate pharmacy students where no significant differences were observed [17]. For those in first and second years however, the stress levels increased by Time 2. This could be attributed to the fact that by Time 2 academic work would have peaked and students were required to submit assignments and regular laboratory reports while preparing for their mid and end of semester examinations [17]. Additionally, the first-year students may probably be experiencing challenges of adapting to their new environment while previous studies have also indicated that the second-year curriculum was heaving because of the transition from studies in basic sciences to mostly pharmaceutical science-related courses in preparation for their pre-clinical studies [12].
In this study, the percentage of female students (35.5%) was lower than the percentage of male students (64.5%) and the female students reported higher mean scores of perceived stress than males [29–31]. Yet, this differences between male and female students in their perception of stress during their study was not significant [32, 33]. This result probably indicates that using participants from a single study site exposed them to similar perceptions of stress and stressors. While no significant relationship has been observed [17] a significant association between gender and perceived stress has been reported [14].
The current study showed that most students perceived pharmacy education as stressful and could affect their academic performance. The participants identified large volume of material required to be studied as the most common stressor. The Bachelor of Pharmacy programme undertaken at the pharmacy school was a 4-year programme comprised of both theoretical and laboratory practical courses in the sciences such as pharmaceutical chemistry, pharmaceutics, pharmaceutical microbiology, pharmacognosy, pharmacology, clinical pharmacy as well as social and behavioral pharmacy [34, 35]. These courses involved large volumes of material to be studied. Laboratory report writing is a requirement for the students after each practical laboratory exercise in the pharmaceutical sciences. This report writing gives a fair idea of how well the student understood the laboratory work. It involves thorough research in order to discuss the results obtained. Within a week, students may have about four or five laboratory works to report on, with each work to be submitted 48 h after the end of the laboratory work. This may have accounted for the related stress.
Most students are stressed due to high standards they set for themselves and/or pressure from parents to perform well in school [36]. The study participants may be exerting themselves to be academic achievers even at the expense of their required amount of sleep and previous studies have indicated that students mostly study at dawn, enjoying few hours of sleep each night [37, 38]. Inadequate relaxation and socialization is reported to negatively affect the quality of life of individuals especially their psychological well-being and this may probably explain why there was the lack of leisure time among participants [39].
Students were noted to employ both positive and negative stress management strategies in accordance with a study conducted by Al-Dubai et al. [15]. Time management was the strategy employed by respondents to reduce their stress levels. Managing one’s time is an effective stress management strategy as it helps in achieving goals as planned without excessively stressing oneself. Some participants opted for music with notable soothing effect on the body and mind [40, 41]. Time with family and friends when stressed also enabled participants to express their negative emotions with their significant others [31]. While the use of alcohol and other substances as well as emotional eating were noted, these findings emphasize the need to address unhealthy stress management strategies among students. Some forms of extra curricula activities for students could be initiated by the school to encourage leisure and relaxation.
There was no significant difference in quality of life measures for male and female students as well as that for the various years of study though the second year students generally reported lower quality of life scores [42]. Similarly, the correlations between overall stress and overall quality of life at both Times 1 and 2 were not significant. However, the relationship between stress and each specific domain of the quality of life of participants during the semester was negative and significant. The findings that stress decreased some domains of quality of life is consistent with previous studies [12, 14, 29, 43]. Two of these studies examined the effects of stress on quality of life among PharmD students and reported that higher levels of stress negatively correlated with the mental domain of quality of life [14, 29]. Per Awadh et al. [43], there was a negative correlation between perceived stress levels and the physical component of quality of life among MPharm students. This study however, reported a negative relationship between stress and all measured aspects of quality of life (i.e. environmental, physical, psychological and social) which is consistent with a study conducted among both undergraduate and graduate students [7]. This observation could be partly due to the difference in curricular between the BPharm, MPharm and Pharm D programmes or partly attributed to the fact that the students, particularly, undergraduates, had less time to maintain or improve their social relationship and other domains of quality of life. Contrary to the pass/fail grading system, the BPharm undergraduate programme has the A, B, C, D system of grading with strict cut-off points. In line with a previous study, the strict cut-off grading system has been noted to significantly reduce the general well-being of medical students [44].
Information on stress and quality of life among pharmacy students in Ghana is limited and this study has provided some information to bridge this knowledge gap. The study however acknowledges some limitations. First, the study was conducted in one out of the three pharmacy schools located in Ghana. The interplay between stress and quality of life may be different in the other institutions and this can be further studied because no available data has been published. Second, the study did not objectively report on how stress and quality of life translated into academic performance using the grade points. The association between these variables merit further investigation. Finally, potential non-response bias was not addressed which led to about 28% non-response rate among the study participants.
Conclusions
The study reported significant negative correlations between stress and the various domains of quality of life of undergraduate pharmacy students. It is thus necessary to institute some personal and institutional strategies to ameliorate the effect of stress on the quality of life of pharmacy students while encouraging the use of positive stress management strategies.
Declarations
Authors' contributions
AO was involved with collection of data, analysis of data, interpretation of results, writing and review of manuscript. IK and FA were involved with the conceptualization of the research, data analysis, interpretation of results, writing and review of manuscript. BA, SA, BT and AN contributed to the research concept, interpretation of results and critical review of manuscript for intellectual content. All authors read and approved the final manuscript.
Acknowledgements
The authors are grateful to the students for participating in the study as well as the school authorities for their support to conduct this study.
Competing interests
The authors declare that they have no competing interests.
Availability of data and materials
The datasets and other materials on the current study can be made available by the corresponding author on reasonable request.
Ethics
Permission to conduct this study was obtained from the scientific review committee at the school of pharmacy, University of Ghana before the commencement of the data collection. All participants gave informed written consent after the study objectives had been clearly understood by them. Each participant was assigned a code in order to ensure anonymity of participants and confidentiality of the information obtained.
Open AccessThis article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated.
Authors’ Affiliations
References
- Seyle H. A syndrome produced by diverse nocuous agents. Nature. 1936;13:31–2.Google Scholar
- Waghachavare VB, Dhumale GB, Kadam YR, et al. A study of stress among students of professional colleges from an urban area in India. Sultan Qaboos Univ Med J. 2013;13(3):429–36.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Dessie Y, Ebrahin J, Awoke T. Mental distress among university students in Ethiopia: a cross-sectional survey. Pan Afr Med J. 2013;15:95–9.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Behere SP, Yadav R, Behere PB. A comparative study of stress among students of medicine, engineering and nursing. Indian J Psychol Med. 2011;33(2):145–8.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Hamaideh SH. Stressors and reactions to stressors among university students. Int J Soc Psychiatry. 2011;57(1):69–80.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Chen L, Wang L, Qiu XH, et al. Depression among Chinese students: prevalence and socio demographic correlates. PLoS ONE. 2013;8(3):e58379.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Bhandari P. Stress and health related quality of life of Nepalese students studying in South Korea: a cross-sectional study. BMC Psychol. 2012;10:26–35.Google Scholar
- Gomathi KG, Ahmed S, Sreedharan J. Causes of stress and coping strategies adopted by undergraduate health professional students in a university in the United Arab Emirates. Sultan Qaboos Univ Med J. 2013;13(3):437–41.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Sharifirad G, Mariani A, Abdolrahrhan C, et al. Stress among Isfahan Medical Sciences Students. J Res Med Sci. 2012;17:402–6.PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Assaf AM. Stress-induced immune-related diseases and health outcomes of pharmacy students: a pilot study. Saudi Pharm J. 2013;21:35–44.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Gallagher CT, Mehta AN, Selvan R, Mirza IB, Radia P, Bharadia NS, Hitch G. Perceived stress levels among undergraduate pharmacy students in the UK. Curr Pharm Teach Learn. 2014;6(3):437–41.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Hirsch JD, Do AH, Hollenbach KA, et al. Students’ health-related quality of life across the preclinical pharmacy curriculum. Am J Pharm Educ. 2009;73(8):147.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Rafidah K, Azizah A, Norzaidi MD, et al. The impact of perceived stress and stress factors on academic performance of pre-diploma science students: a Malaysian study. IJSRE. 2009;2:13–26.Google Scholar
- Marshall LL, Allison A, Nykamp D, et al. Perceived stress and quality of life among doctor of pharmacy students. Am J Pharm Educ. 2008;72:137.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Al-Dubai SAR, Al-Naggar RA, Alshagga MA, et al. Stress and coping strategies of students in a medical faculty in Malaysia. Malays J Med Sci. 2011;18:57–64.PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Accreditation council for pharmacy education. Accreditation standards and guidelines for the professional program in pharmacy leading to the doctor of pharmacy degree Chicago. 2006. http://www.acpe-accredit.org. Accessed Jan 12 2015.
- Sun SH, Zoriah A. Assessing stress among undergraduate pharmacy students in University of Malaya. Indian J Pharm Educ. 2015;49(2):99–105.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Andreou E, Alexopoulos EC, Darviri C. Perceived stress scale: reliability and validity in Greece. Int J Environ Res Public Health. 2011;8(8):3287–9.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Frick LJ, Frick JL, Coffman RE, et al. Student stress in a three-year doctor of pharmacy program using a mastery learning educational model. Am J Pharm Educ. 2011;75:64.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Lee EY, Mun MS, Lee SH, et al. Perceived stress and gastrointestinal symptoms in nursing students in Korea: a cross-sectional survey. BMC Nurs. 2011;10:22.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Shah M, Hasan S, Malik S, et al. Sources and severity of stress among medical undergraduates in a Pakistani medical school. Med Educ. 2004;38:471–81.Google Scholar
- Walli H, Ghazal H, German S, et al. Prevalence of stress and its relation to hair fall in female medical students. JPMS. 2013;3:205–7.Google Scholar
- Cohen S, Janicki-Deverts D. Who’s stressed? Distributions of psychological stress in the United States in probability samples from 1983, 2006, and 2009. J Appl Soc Psychol. 2012;42(6):1320–34.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Skevington SM, Lofty M, O’Connell KA. The World Health Organization’s WHOQOL-BREF quality of life assessment: psychometric properties and results of the international field trial. A report from the WHOQOL group. Qual Life Res. 2004;13:299–310.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- World Health Organization’s. Quality of Life group: WHOQOL-sBREF Introduction. Administration and scoring. Field Trial version. 1996. p. 10–13.Google Scholar
- Lee EH. Review of the psychometric evidence of the perceived stress scale. Asian Nurs Res. 2012;6(4):121–7.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Votta RJ, Benau EM. Predictors of stress in doctor of pharmacy students: results from a nationwide survey. Curr Pharm Teach Learn. 2013;5(5):365–72.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Murphy RJ, Gray SA, Sterling G, Reeves K, DuCette J. A comparative study of professional student stress. J Dent Educ. 2009;73(3):328–37.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Gupchup G, Borrego M, Konduri N. The impact of student life stress on health related quality of life among doctor of pharmacy students. Coll Stud J. 2004;38:292–301.Google Scholar
- Ortmeier BG, Wolfgang AP, Martin BC. Career commitment, career plans, and perceived stress: a survey of pharmacy students. Am J Pharm Educ. 1991;55:138–42.Google Scholar
- Beall JW, DeHart RM, Riggs RM, Hensley J. Perceived stress, stressors, and coping mechanisms among Doctor of Pharmacy Students. Pharmacy. 2015;3(4):344–54.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Dutta AP, Pyles MA, Miederhoff P. Measuring and understanding stress in pharmacy students. In: Landow MV, editor. Stress and mental health of college students. New York: Nova Science Publishers; 2006. p. 1–28.Google Scholar
- Niemi P, Vainiomäki P. Medical students’ distress-quality, continuity and gender differences during a six-year medical programme. Med Teach. 2006;28(2):136–41.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Kretchy IA, Afrane BA, Debrah AB, Gagblezu-Alomatu D. Pharmacy education: global and Ghanaian perspectives. In: Sackeyfio AC, Nyarko AK, Amoateng P, editors. Development and use of quality medicines in Ghana. Tema: Digibooks; 2014. p. 89–96.Google Scholar
- Sosabowski MH, Gard PR. Pharmacy Education in the United Kingdom. Am J Pharm Educ. 2008;72(6):130.View ArticlePubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Leonard NR, Gwadz MV, Ritchie A, et al. A multi-method exploratory study of stress, coping, and substance use among high school youth in private schools. Front Psychol. 1028;2015:6. doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2015.01028.Google Scholar
- Lee YJ, Cho SJ, Cho HI, et al. Insufficient sleep and suicidality in adolescents. Sleep. 2012;35(4):455–60.PubMedPubMed CentralGoogle Scholar
- Gillen-O’Neel C, Huynh VW, Fuligni AJ. To study or to sleep? The academic costs of extra studying at the expense of sleep. Child Dev. 2013;84(1):133–42.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
- Qian X, Yarnal CM, Almeida DM. Does leisure time as a stress coping resource increase affective complexity? applying the dynamic model of affect (DMA). J Leis Res. 2013;45:393–414.PubMedGoogle Scholar
- Avers L, Mathur A, Kamat D. Music therapy in pediatrics. Clin Pediatr (Phila). 2007;46(7):575–9.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Hays T, Minichiello V. The contribution of music to quality of life in older people: an Australian qualitative study. Ageing Soc. 2005;25(02):261–78.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Unni EJ, Madrid L, Oderda G, Saokaew S. Quality of life of pharmacy students in the United States. Curr Pharm Teach Learn. 2015;7(6):753–63.View ArticleGoogle Scholar
- Awadh AI, Aziz NA, Yaseen SN, Abdulameer SA, Sahib MN, Al-Lela O. A comparison study of perceived stress and quality of life among Master of Pharmacy and non-pharmacy master’s students. Pharm Educ. 2013;13(1):22–8.Google Scholar
- Bloodgood RA, Short JG, Jackson JM, Martindale JR. A change to pass/fail grading in the first two years at one medical school results in improved psychological well-being. Acad Med. 2009;84(5):655–62.View ArticlePubMedGoogle Scholar
