Stress, Stressors and Coping Strategies Relationships

Stress is defined as emotional changes or disturbances as a result of continual interactions between the person and the environment. Stimulants that cause stress to the person are called as stressors. The ways of the personal responses toward the stressors are known as coping strategies.

In order to understand the relationships between the stress level, stressors and coping strategies, we must understand 3 components that influence the relationships. The 3 components are affective, cognitive and psychomotor component.

Affective component involve in receiving and perceiving stimulants that interact with the person. Emotional Quotient (EQ), Spiritual Quotient (SQ) and Attitudes of the person will influence the person's perception towards the stimulants. This process will lead to either the person perceive the stimulants as stressors or not. If the person perceive it as stressors then it will stimulate the cognitive and the pyschomotor component for further process. In short the affective components act as stress receptors that are influenced by the person's beliefs, motives, intentions and attitudes.

Cognitive component involve in apprasing the stressors. At this level the thought will appraise and analyse the stressors either as challenges or as threats. If the person appraises the stressors as challenges then the stress caused by the stressors will promote the person's performance. However, if the person appraises the stressors as threats then stress caused by the stressors will inhibit the person's performance. Stress that promote the person's performance is called as favourable stress or good stress. Stress that inhibit the person's performance is called as unfavourable stress or bad stress. Stress level of a person will be influenced by the process.

Psychomotor component involve in carry out responses (actions) toward the stressors. The ways of actions are carried out are known as coping strategies. The coping strategies are influenced by the stressors and the appraisal process at cognitive level. Direct influence of stressors will cause fight or flight phenomenon. Continual interactions between the appraisal and the actions toward the stressors will lead to the adjustment of the person's coping strategies. Coping strategies that reduce the person's stress level is known as positive coping strategies. Coping strategies that increase the person's stress level is known as negative coping strategies.

In conclusion, the stress level are influenced by the EQ, SQ, attitudes, how the person appraise the stressors, and the ways of a person responses toward the stressors. Thus it is important for everyone to recognize their stressors and the ways they cope with the stress. By doing this they will be able to find ways that work well in reducing their own stress.

Comprehensive Stress Management

By Dr Peter Lind

A comprehensive approach to stress management is to make sure you deal with each part of stress. There are three major stresses that need your complete attention: physical, nutritional, and emotional. To be complete, each of these causes of stress need to be studied and dealt with.

Physical stress is tearing you down

To reduce stress physically you have to do the most effective exercise with the least risk of symptom, injury, and death. Exercise must improve your strength, your cardiovascular system, your body fat, and bone strength. It must improve your muscle mass and its tone.

Physically, you must:

1. Know the difference between aerobic, anaerobic exercises and fit these both into your exercise program.

2. Know how is health lifestyle and exercise related and take the steps to improve your health through exercising.

3. Know what is the definition of aerobic exercise and do some easy aerobics today even if it means walking around the block.

4. Understand what makes anaerobic exercising so important and how to begin this type of exercise.

5. Know the types of aerobic exercise and work aerobics into your exercise without stressing more of your system.

Nutritional stress is eating you up

Think about what you eat. Why are you causing even more stress? Nutrition is the soil for your health. If you are ill all the time your body is not repairing itself from the ground up. To heal you need the right diet. You need the right source of minerals, vitamins and enzymes that are optimal for your body to heal and repair.

Nutritionally, to receive the best benefit you must:

1. Know what is the definition of nutrition, let's start there.

2. Know what makes up good nutrition.

3. Know why is nutrition important when exercise.

4. Know how bad fast foods really are.

5. Know the reason why the food pyramid changed.

6. Understand how the basic food groups are put together.

7. Know the effects of cooking methods on food.

Repressing emotional stress will just come up as stress

All illness, disease, and malady has an emotional component. Every health problem reoccur over and over until the hidden emotional components are found and corrected.

Emotional control is paramount for reducing stress and one of the most important aspects for helping the body maintain homeostasis.

To enjoy a healthy balance of emotions, you must:

1. Know how stress affects health.

2. Know how stress affects lifestyle.

3. Know how stress produces physical symptoms.

4. Know what do with negative emotions.

To address each of these issues will take dilegence and time but what else do you have? As you begin now you can really change your life. Tell someone what you have learned.

You can do this research on your own or you can get help with this information on my website. However you do this make sure you do. It will help you now and it will prolong your long, healthy life.

For more stress information go to Manage Stress

Permission is granted to reprint the article, free of charge, providing that the article remains unchanged.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Dr_Peter_Lind

Deal with Medical School Stress Without Going Crazy

By Amber C. Smith

Medical school is probably the hardest, most time consuming schooling around. You spend eight or more years of your life simply trying to survive medical school and your internship. Though medical school is extremely difficult, you can handle the stress if you do it the right way.

Work Ahead
First of all, work ahead. If you have an assignment due soon, start on it really early. In medical school, it's easy to get too busy and not get everything finished. Instead of procrastinating, work ahead on your assignments and readings so that if you have an emergency, you won't get behind.

Ask For Help
In medical school, the idea of asking for help isn't common, but it is important. Most professors are more than willing to help students who are having problems in their class. Just be sure to ask sooner rather than later or you may be at a point where you can't improve your grades quickly enough to stay in medical school.

Get Some Sleep
Medical school is an extremely exhausting time in your life, particularly once you start your internship. The best thing you can do for yourself is get some sleep as often as possible. Even if you do have to turn down working in a cool surgery, always go home and rest once you get tired.

Study with Friends
Studying becomes your life in medical school, but it doesn't have to be working. Create study groups with your friends as this will combine studying with some fun, so you don't become burned out as quickly. Maybe you should go out to dinner or meet in the library with snacks and books so that you can study while having fun and food.

Take a Break
Medical students always seem to feel that they need to study constantly, but if you want to stay sane, you need to take a break sometimes. Whether you go running, play Frisbee, or just take a long bubble bath, you will definitely feel rejuvenated and more motivated once you've taken a short break.

What to Remember

When you're stressed out in medical school, particularly during your internship, remember these things:

1. Work ahead.

2. You can ask for help.

3. Get some sleep.

4. Study with friends.

5. Take a break.

Take a look at more industry related articles by Amber Smith at CareersandEducation.com . Amber Smith is a frequent contributor with articles pertaining to using Distance Learning and Career Advice.

Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/?expert=Amber_C._Smith

Reality of Medical Training

Let us ask some questions to ourselves, what is the reality of Medical Education? Do we realise about this? Do we know what is the purpose of Medical Education? The purpose of Medical Education is to produce academically competent, skillful and professional doctors to serve the people. The medical school curriculum has been designed to achieve and accomplish these visions. However, some aspects of training may cause unwanted negative impacts on medical students' physical, emotional and mental health that can inhibit these ambitions and values. Studies have revealed that medical students well-being deteriorate after students begin medical training and remains poor throughout the training. At individual level, the distress can contribute to poor academic achievement and personal developments. At professional level, as medical pratitioners, studies have shown that distress students can lead to cynicism and subsequently may affects students' relationships with faculty, patients' care, feeling inadequate and unsatisfied with their career, and ultimately the culture of the medical profession. These are the reality of medical training that we should know and face. Perhaps, we as medical teachers need to think and come out with realistic solutions to reduce complications of medical training on medical students well-being. With that, we leave this topic open to be discussed further.

Knowing our learning styles for effective learning.

What is learning styles? How to identify our learning styles? Why we are so bothered about it? How can its help in improving our learning effectiveness? These are questions commonly asked once we are discussing about learning styles.

Everyone have diferrent learning styles. Learning styles are classified into various ways, but most established and widely used learning styles classification are VARK and Kolb's learning styles. In this article we are going to explore Kolb's Learning Styes. Kolb's (1984) postulated that there are four learning styles exist that combine to form two learning dimensions which are perception continuum and process continuum. It is theorised that everybody use each of the learning style to some extent but has a preffered learning style resulting tendency to learn either through concrete experience (feeling), through abstract conceptualisation (thinking), through reflective observation (watching) or through active experimentation (doing). James Zull (2002) stated that "The art of changging the brain is by enriching learning by exploring the nature of learning". On top of that, Darwin stated that "It is not the strongest of species that survive, not the most intelingence, but the most responsive to the change." Thus, by knowing and understanding our learning style nature we can response and adapt to changes better which can help in enhancing our learning effectivenes.

How to recognise our own learning style preference? In general, according to Kolb, there are four categories of learning style which are called as Diverging, Assimilating, Converging and Accomodating. Each category have their own characteristics and by knowing it we can identify our own learning style in term of the most preferred and the least preffered. Diverging is combination of feeling and watching. Assimilating is combination of watching and thinking. Converging is combination of thinking and doing. Accomodating is combination of doing and feeling.

Individual with diverging learning style see things is various aspects, they have a lot of ideas and sensitive to feeling. they like brainstorming session and gathering information. Usually When they learning they preferred groups discussion in order them to gather information, they like personal feedback and listening with open minded. Individual with assimilating learning style like the ideas and concept rather than practical application, they have ability to understand a broad range of information and they will put it in concise, systematic and logical form, and they tend to use evaluate things based on ideas and theories rather than practical application. When learn, they like lecture, reading, exploring theories and take some times to think through before acting. Individual with converging learning style like to find out the practical uses of teories and concepts, they have ability to solve problems and to make decision towards questions or problems based on finding solutions. When learn, they like to experiment ideas and concept, simulation, laboratory works and practical applications. Individual with accomodating learning style tend to learn primarily based on the experiences during practical session, they do what they was planned, like to try out ideas which are new and challenging, they tend to make their decision based on their feeling rather than logical thinking and they heavily depending on other to find information. When learn, they like working in group to complete assignments, they like field-work, and they like to try out new approaches t0 complete tasks or projects. These are the characteristics of the learning styles. Now reflect on ourselves and gauge where we are. Which is the most fits and describes us? Which is the least fits and describes us? Answer the questions and you will find out your learning nature.

It is hoped that this brief introduction on learning styles can help us in improving our learning effectiveness and preparing us to be a responsive person to changes.

What are stressors for medical students?

Everyone have encountered stressors in their daily life either they do realise or they don't realise about it. Stressors is defined as anything that can cause stress to persons either physically or psychologically. We should realise that stressors are different depending on persons' characteristics, surrounding environment, cultures and beliefs. If that so, then why we are so bothered about stressors? Does it really important to know our stressors? If we know our stressors, what can we do about it? These are some questions that come across in our mind.

Medical students are vulnerable to stress. We know that stress is caused by stressors. By knowing their stressors we can find ways to prevent and overcome it. What are stressors for medical students? Many studies have been conducted to look for medical students' stressors. Most of the studies reported that there are 10 most common stressors in medical students and most of them course-related. The top 5 most common stressors that were reported are time pressure, tests and examinations, getting behind in the work, heavy workload and unclear lectures. Other stressors are commonly cited such as financial problems, relationship problems, getting poor marks, family problems, and conflicting demands. Overall pattern of stressors is the same regardless of curriculum adopted by medical schools, eventhough frequency of some stressors might be significantly different.

Now, we know causes of stress among medical students, therefore what can we do about it? Most of stressors are related to course contents, therefore it is unrealistic and impossible to reduce the contents to overcome this problem because to be a competent doctor those contents are essential and crucial. Therefore, solution for this is medical schools and teachers must teach their students how to manage and cope with stress. Perhaps, during first year orientation program, medical school can arrange so called stress-reduction program such as mini workshops on stress management, coping skills and appropriate learning approaches for effective learning in medical course. By doing this at least medical students aware and alert about possible stressors they will face in the future. Therefore, they will proactivley find ways and strategies to prevent and overcome possible stressors that they will face later on. If such measures can be materialised by medical schools, perhaps it can help in reducing students' stress and indirectly can improve medical students well-being. As a result, medical schools can produce healthy and competent doctors.

What are negative effects of stress on Medical Students?

Studies have shown that the prevalence of stress among medical students is high and in facts, it is higher than normal population prevalence. Eventhough optimal stress can enhance medical students' performance and abilities but over stress can cause a lot of mental and physical health problems. Studies have revealed that over stress can reduce medical students' self-esteem and self-confident, impinge decision making, difficulties in handling conflicts, cynicism, increase anxiety and depression, reduce attention and concentration, having sleeping problems, increase alcohol and drugs consumptions (substances abuse) and to a certain extend they commit suicide. All of these negative effects inhibit medical students' achievement and personal attributes development. As a result, medical students feeling inadequate and unsatisfied with their career as a medical pratitioner in the future. Therefore, early detection and diagnosis of stress in medical students can help in preventing future possible illnesses related to stress.

Do Medical Students Pyschologically Distress?

Medical Education is the most stressful course compare to other courses. Many studies have shown that medical students are at high risk of developing psychological distress. Prevalence of psychological distress among medical students are ranged from 30% to 50%. About 15 % to 25% of them developed depression symptoms and around 5% of them need treatment. The prevalence of distress in medical students is higher than normal population. Distress can cause a lof of negative impacts to medical students. Studies have revealed that medical students in distress are academically underachievement, socially incompetent and a few of them commit suicide. Therefore, medical students distress is not a merely simple issue that can be ingored and neglected without proper attention, medical institutions need to address this issue appropriately and perhaps interventions can be planned to help in preventing and reducing adverse effects of psychological distress to medical students.