Abstract

INTRODUCTION: The medical profession belongs to those professions having one of the highest levels of stress. The aim of the work was to define the styles of coping with stress and the level of sense of self-efficacy and to establish the dependencies of the factors mentioned by students of medicine. MATERIAL AND METHODS: The survey study included a group of 184 VI year students of medicine. The following were used: Questionnaire for coping in stressful situations CISS, Generalized self-efficacy scale – GSES, authors’ own multiple-choice research questionnaire for the specialization of medicine. Analysis was conducted using the statistical package for IBM, SPSS Statistics 22. RESULTS: Among the 184 surveyed students, there were 122 women and 62 men. 57 people considered the choice of family medicine as their target specialization and 127 subjects chose other specializations. More than half of the students had a task-oriented style of coping, among 32% the the evasion style dominated and 14.6% of the emotional style, equally in men and women. There were no inter-group differences in the styles of coping with stress. CONCLUSIONS: 1. Medical students, regardless of their choice of specialization, have a task style of coping with stress and a high level of self-efficacy. 2. Students with higher levels of self-efficacy often display the task style of coping with stress and engage in seeking social contacts. 3. Students choosing a specialization other than family medicine had a significantly higher sense of self-efficacy. 4. A high level of self-efficacy and task style of coping with stress as part of the personality profile of a future doctor may indicate the possibility of better functioning in the profession.

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