Determinants of Alcohol Consumption among Medical Students: Results from POLLEK Cohort Study

Maksymilian Gajda, Katarzyna Sedlaczek, Szymon Szemik and Małgorzata Kowalska
Additional contact information
Maksymilian Gajda: Department of Epidemiology, School of Medicine in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia, 40-055 Katowice, Poland
Katarzyna Sedlaczek: School of Medicine in Zabrze, Medical University of Silesia, 40-055 Katowice, Poland
Szymon Szemik: Department of Nursing Propaedeutics, School of Health Sciences, Medical University of Silesia, 40-027 Katowice, Poland
Małgorzata Kowalska: Department of Epidemiology, School of Medicine in Katowice, Medical University of Silesia, 40-055 Katowice, Poland

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 11, 1-13

Abstract: Background: The use of alcohol is a serious public health concern all over the world, especially among young people, including students. Medical students are often exposed to higher levels of distress, which may lead to a higher prevalence of psychoactive substance use and psychiatric co-morbidities. Alcohol abuse can be one of the detrimental methods of coping with distress. The aim of this study was to assess the prevalence of alcohol use among medical students in Poland. Methods: We analyzed data from the POLLEK cohort study on alcohol consumption and possible influencing factors. Results: Among the 540 students included, 167 (30.9%) were hazardous drinkers (HAZ) according to the AUDIT test. The main identified risk factors of hazardous/harmful drinking were male gender and smoking cigarettes. Conclusions: Given the fairly widespread alcohol abuse among medical students, it is necessary to implement screening (and intervention in the next stage) programs in these groups.

Keywords: hazardous alcohol drinking; harmful alcohol drinking; alcohol consumption; medical students; AUDIT; AUDIT-C (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5872/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/11/5872/ (text/html)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:gam:jijerp:v:18:y:2021:i:11:p:5872-:d:565499

Access Statistics for this article

IJERPH is currently edited by Ms. Jenna Liu

More articles in IJERPH from MDPI
Bibliographic data for series maintained by MDPI Indexing Manager ().