Health Sciences Graduate Students Coping Mechanisms During the COVID-19 Pandemic

Goals of the Study/Hypothesis: The Covid-19 pandemic negatively impacted education at all grade levels. Specifically, we highlight two health sciences graduate programs and aimed to deduce if coping mechanisms varied based on if their curriculum was taught primarily in-person or via a virtual platform. We hypothesize that the program that spent more time in a virtual learning environment will have maladaptive coping mechanisms compared to the other program.

Materials & Methods: University Institutional Review Board (IRB) approval was obtained prior to participant recruitment. Current second- and third-year graduate students were invited to participate via university-issued email. Program A primarily utilized a virtual teaching platform while program B returned to in-person curriculum months before program A. The COPE Inventory by Dr. Charles Carver, PhD., was utilized to measure functional and dysfunctional coping responses in this participant population. Students from both programs were asked to retrospectively reflect on the time during the height of the Covid-19 pandemic while completing this survey.

Results: We did not find statistically significant differences in coping mechanisms indicated by their COPE score between program A (M = 71.05, SD = 9.42) and program B (M = 71.87, SD = 13.19), t(218) = 0.53, p = 0.59.

Conclusions: The Covid-19 pandemic changed the way we approach education. Our results did not support our hypothesis and we search for an alternative interpretation of our data set. Due to the lack of research on how Covid affected graduate education, additional research should be explored.

Reflections: Through interprofessional education, a medical student and an optometry student aimed to highlight how Covid-19 impacted graduate education. It was found that although the original hypothesis was not supported, their classmates coping mechanisms were subpar secondary to the high-stress environment and expectations placed upon young medical professionals. At the institutional level, this is an opportunity to incorporate further mental health initiatives to protect future providers, especially in light of the global pandemic.