Foreign First-Year Female Medical Students Do Experience Acute Stress in the New Environment as Evidenced in a Virtual Model

Abstract

Students in foreign countries face challenges when adjusting to a new socio-economic and cultural environment. Our aim was to study the stress experienced by first-year foreign (F) medical students in a new educational environment. We used sensorimotor reaction times (SMRT) as a tool to assess their adaptation to stress. The study included 14 F and 10 local (L) first-year healthy female medical students. They were exposed to two simulated virtual visual tasks: simple (S) and choice (C) SMRT (SSMRT/CSMRT) in random order. We calculated the means (M), standard deviations (SD), and residual standard deviations (RSD) for both groups during SSMRT and CSMRT. For statistical check, we calculated the accuracy index (AI) and some derivative parameters of RT histograms: coefficient of variation (CV), and reaction sustainability (RS). Our results showed no significant differences in the M, SD, and RSD during SSMRT and CSMRT between the two groups, indicating almost equal and high mental abilities in both groups. However, higher CV for L students compared to the F students were found during CSMRT, indicating less concentration of attention in the L students. Significant differences between the means of RS in F and L students during CSMRT were also revealed, indicating more reaction stability in the L students. On the contrary, the F students showed lower accuracy, especially during SSMRT, implying faster and more impulsive error responses as they familiarized themselves with the new environment. The mental chronometry parameters in F and L first-year female medical students are the same. Some neuroticism in F-students can be explained by the presence of certain stress related to the difficulty adapting to a new environment. However, F-students showed better concentration than L-students in choice tasks, indicating a “focus on achievement coping strategies” of F-students.