Medical Students Counteract with Test Anxiety: victory or defeat?

One specific type of anxiety is test anxiety, which involves worry, stress, lack of confidence, fear of failure, or confusion that a person may feel before, during, or after an exam. The present study aimed to investigate the anxiety level of medical students of Azad University of Medical Sciences during their critical exams.

The present cross-sectional study was conducted on medical student of the Islamic Azad University, Mashhad Branch, Mashhad, Iran who were in the internship stage by census sampling method. State-Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI) questionnaire was applied to measure the participants before their pre-internship written exam and Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE).

There was no statistically significant difference in the mean manifest anxiety score between genders in the clinical competency exam (p=0.17). Similarly, there was no significant difference in the mean manifest anxiety score between genders in the written exam (p=0.63). However, females presented higher levels of anxiety in both written exam (47.7±11.4) and OSCE (42.0±9.6)

OSCE not only does not cause more anxiety in the student than the written test but also less anxiety due to the direct interaction and proper communication between the examiner and the student is experienced.