Future health care workers-mental health problems and correlates

The aim of this study was to determine the presence of mental health problems among healthcare students and to examine its relation to work-related stress and physical pathologies. The study was performed using 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 resident physician in Occupational Medicine. We used the GHQ-12 questionnaire to evaluate if the respondent had experienced a particular symptom or behaviour recently and a physical examination to report the presence of pathologies. The hierarchical regression had the GHQ-12 as dependent variable, demographics in the first block, 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 status of students. We found that there is a significant correlation between work-related stress and existent physical pathologies with mental health problems among health care students. Preventive and intervention measures should be taken in order to prevent work-related stress in healthcare students during their university career, in particular if they have a history of pre-existing clinical pathologies.