Perception of environment stressors in Chilean dentistry students

Objective: To evaluate the stress factors perceived by dentistry students at the beginning of the academic year, according to academic year and gender. Material and Methods: Descriptive, exploratory, non-experimental, cross-sectional study. The DES30-Sp survey was applied, at the beginning of the first semester 2016 to a sample of 495 dentistry students from first to 5th year of Universidad San Sebastián, Concepción. The Statistical tests used were the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (K-S) and Levene homoscedasticity studies. The internal reliability of the data was estimated using the Cronbach’s alpha and the intraclass correlation coefficient. Mean, standard deviation and standard error were estimated. Comparisons between courses and gender were made using the General Multivariate ANOVA (Model III) using the tracers Pillai, Lambda de Wilks and Trace de Hotelling. The level of significance was α≤0.05 and β≥0.80. Results: It is observed that all three estimators were highly significant (p = 0.0005) for the Course and Gender factor. Stress increased steadily as the courses progressed with little inflection in all components of stress and in general stress. Women appeared with a higher perception than men in all components. Conclusion: There is a generalized stress in all the courses and it increases in the superior ones. The perception of the factors of stress varies according to the course and is greater in women.