Background & Aims
University students with chronic pain are more likely to experience academic challenges and worse quality of life compared to their peers without chronic pain (Serbic et al., 2021). Affected university students are generally not willing to disclose their pain to their institution (Serbic et al., 2021). Some work has examined the prevalence of chronic pain in nursing students (Shaygan et al., 2022), and low back pain in medical students (Vujcic et al., 2018; Amelot et al., 2019). To date, however, there have been no studies focusing on the chronic pain experiences of medical students in Canada. Therefore, the purpose of our study was to address this knowledge gap by investigating the prevalence of chronic pain in this population, the students’ perceived impact of chronic pain on their lives, and their attitudes surrounding disclosure of their pain to their institutions.
Methods
An online, anonymous survey was developed and made available in the English language. Information was collected regarding the characteristics and impact of participants’ pain, as well as pain disclosure status. The survey was distributed via administration, student societies and/or social media to students at eleven different medical schools across Canada, and by the Canadian Federation of Medical Students via e-newsletter. Participants provided informed consent when beginning the survey, and were asked to confirm their status as medical students studying in Canada in the initial survey questions. The data was analyzed using descriptive statistics via SPSS.
Results
There were 363 study participants and 168 of these participants indicated that they experience chronic pain. Of those with chronic pain, 72.6% identified as women and 32.1% identified as racialized persons. Participants indicated that pain most impacted their overall quality of life (24.4%), daily activities (18.5%), mood (13.7%) and frequency of exercise (13.7%). One or more absences from medical school attributed to pain were reported by 45.3% of participants, whereas 11.9% of participants reported 5 or more related absences. Only 22.0% of participants had disclosed their chronic pain or pain-related condition to their institution.
Conclusions
These findings suggest that chronic pain is impacting the quality of life of medical students and their institutions are largely not aware of this. Other domains such as mood and exercise frequency are also affected. Further research is required to understand the barriers faced by medical students to disclosing their pain, as well as to evaluate existing and potential supports for these affected students.
References
Amelot, A., Mathon, B., Haddad, R., Renault, M. C., Duguet, A., & Steichen, O. (2019). Low back pain among medical students: A burden and an impact to consider! Spine, 44(19), 1390–1395. https://doi.org/10.1097/BRS.0000000000003067
Serbic, D., Friedrich, C., & Murray, R. (2021). Psychological, social and academic functioning in university students with chronic pain: A systematic review. Journal of American college health: J of ACH, 1–15. https://doi.org/10.1080/07448481.2021.2006199
Shaygan, M., Tehranineshat, B., Mohammadi, A., & Foruhi, Z. (2020). A national survey of the prevalence of chronic pain in nursing students and the associated factors. Investigacion y educacion en enfermeria, 40(1), e09. https://doi.org/10.17533/udea.iee.v40n1e09
Vujcic, I., Stojilovic, N., Dubljanin, E., Ladjevic, N., Ladjevic, I., & Sipetic-Grujicic, S. (2018). Low back pain among medical students in Belgrade (Serbia): A cross-sectional study. Pain research & management, 2018, 8317906. https://doi.org/10.1155/2018/8317906