Future Health Care Workers-Mental Health Problems and Correlates

The aim of this study was to determine the presence of mental health problems among healthcarestudents and to examine its relation to work-related stress and physical pathologies. The study was performedusing data collected between 2012 and 2013 from Italian healthcare students of the University of Florence.Participants were also submitted to an interview and a physical examination was carried out by a residentphysician in Occupational Medicine. We used the GHQ-12 questionnaire to evaluate if the respondent hadexperienced a particular symptom or behaviour recently and a physical examination to report the presence ofpathologies. The hierarchical regression had the GHQ-12 as dependent variable, demographics in the firstblock, dimensions of physical pathologies in the second block and work-related stress in the third block.The results pointed out that both pre-existent diseases and work-related stress affect the mental health statusof students. We found that there is a significant correlation between work-related stress and existentphysical pathologies with mental health problems among health care students. Preventive and interventionmeasures should be taken in order to prevent work-related stress in healthcare students during theiruniversity career, in particular if they have a history of pre-existing clinical pathologies.