DOMINANT COPING STRATEGIES IN STUDENTS OF MEDICAL COLLEGE

Abstract

The article presents the results of the ascertaining stage of the study of coping behaviour in students of medical college. The author carried out a theoretical analysis of generic concepts of sanogenic coping, such as sanogenic reflection, sanogenic thinking, coping strategies and coping behaviour. It has been investigated that the most frequent events that cause stress in medical college students are: the death of a close family member, changes in the financial situation, intersex relationships, starting college (for male respondents) and illnesses, changes in social activity, change of a place of residence, conflicts in a collective (dormitory), death of a family member or friend, change of a place of residence and study (for female respondents). The level of stress resistance was experimentally studied and coping strategies were chosen by students to overcome the current stressors. It has been found out that the threshold level of resistance to stress prevails in most students. Thus, students are forced to make a lot of effort and spend their own internal resources to fight against negative mental states that appear in the process of coping with stress. It was identified that there is a significant share of medical college students with low stress resistance – 25% of male respondents and 22% of female respondents, and quite a few individuals showed a high level of stress resistance – only 12% of male respondents and 12% of female respondents. It was found that problem-oriented coping and the search for social support are dominant among medical college students’ coping strategies; other types of strategies such as emotion-oriented coping, avoidance, and distraction are used somewhat less often by young people. It is emphasized that adaptive coping strategies contribute to effective coping with stressful situations.
Based on the research, it was found that in most cases, the coping strategies chosen by the students led to an even greater increase in stress. Consequently, the problem of formation and development of productive copingstrategies among students of future medical workers remains relevant. The prospect of further research is the development of practical recommendations for effective coping with stressful and crisis situations in the activities of future medics.