Psychological Burden and Experiences Following Exposure to COVID-19: A Qualitative and Quantitative Study of Chinese Medical Student Volunteers

Kaiting Zhang, Yixiang Peng, Xiaowei Zhang and Liping Li
Additional contact information
Kaiting Zhang: Injury Prevention Research Center, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou 515041, China
Yixiang Peng: Injury Prevention Research Center, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou 515041, China
Xiaowei Zhang: Injury Prevention Research Center, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou 515041, China
Liping Li: Injury Prevention Research Center, Shantou University Medical College, Shantou 515041, China

IJERPH, 2021, vol. 18, issue 8, 1-13

Abstract: Background : During the COVID-19 pandemic, some medical students devoted themselves to volunteer activities, but it was the first time that they had been exposed to such an infectious disease and they might have experienced fear in the face of the epidemic. We aimed to conduct a timely assessment of the psychological burden and experience on medical student volunteers during the COVID-19 pandemic. Methods : We used the 21-item Depression Anxiety Stress Scales to survey the psychology burden of students in April 2020. Semi-structured interviews were conducted with nine medical students who signed up for volunteer activities in Chinese from February to April 2020. Quantitative and qualitative methods were used to analyze the data. Results : The detection of depression, anxiety and stress of medical student volunteers were 26.8%, 20.2% and 11.1%, respectively. The volunteer’s negative emotions were more pronounced before work and diminished gradually. Most participants expressed no concern about being infected themselves, but worry about family infection. Participant’s motivations for volunteering were primarily their duties as medical students and encouragement from their families/teachers. The vast majority of medical students said they would be willing to work as medical assistants again and this experience would not affect their career choice. Conclusions : Chinese medical student volunteers tended to show negative emotions at the beginning of their work, and then gradually declined, while positive emotions emerged. Most medical students were willing to volunteer as medical assistants when their country needed them due to their sense of responsibility as medical students. This study on the psychological and experiential aspects were derived from Chinese medical student volunteers and might have a significant impact on future public health emergencies in similar settings.

Keywords: COVID-19; medical student volunteers; qualitative research; psychological burden (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: I I1 I3 Q Q5 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4089/pdf (application/pdf)
https://www.mdpi.com/1660-4601/18/8/4089/ (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:8:p:4089-:d:535132

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 ().