Survey of Health Conditions Among Medical Students

Since the opening of the school term in the fall of 1924, the annual physical examination has been a compulsory feature of the curriculum at the College of Physicians and Surgeons of Columbia University. Up to the opening of the present school term (1931), 1,124 have been examined. This number includes 116 women (10.3 percent) … The purpose of this report is to present a few figures gathered from the first examinations of these 1,124 students. … Habits—69 percent state that they take more or less regular exercise, although I suspect that in many cases the exercise is limited to walks to and from the subway. A small group, mainly the Columbia College graduates, make use of the college gymnasium and swimming pool. Others take advantage of nearby handball and squash courts. Outdoor exercise seems to be the exception. Most students appear to get adequate sleep, although 11 percent report having less than seven hours' sleep nightly. Long-distance commuting is a factor here. One man actually reported five hours a day spent on trains and subways! Sleep is usually reported as being satisfactory, except in the dormitory group who complain of noise and other distractions. 64 percent use tobacco in some form. Excessive smoking (over 20 cigarettes a day) is rare. 20.5 percent admit the use of alcohol, usually moderate and in the form of an occasional party. This figure obviously does not include all the occasional drinkers. 74 percent drink coffee but only 20 percent drink tea. … In a rough attempt to get some information concerning their emotional status, it was found that 31.7 percent were subject to worry and anxiety, the chief contributing factors being studies and finances. A small number admitted periods of depression, inferiority feelings and general instability … This brings us to a very important health problem among medical students which is hardly tangible enough to be put into statistical form, namely, the reaction of the student to his new environment. The medical course is notoriously a grind. Certain students, after a desultory four years spent in college, come to medical school without any proper knowledge of how to study. Others are temperamentally unfit for medicine or have only a half-hearted interest in the work. For these students the first year is mainly a period of adjustment. It is this year in which the scholastic mortality is by far the highest and also the year in which the greatest amount of ill-health, especially in the field of nervous disorders, occurs. Although the medical school supplies the test, it is undoubtedly true that many of these students are badly adjusted to life in general and would probably stack up as less than average in any competitive career. Mental ability appears to be less important than emotional adaptation. In some instances men of high scholastic standing have been unable to stand the gaff. The net result has been the development of a fair sprinkling of neurasthenias, anxiety states, depressions and, occasionally, a frank psychosis. Edson Burr Heck Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons

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