Date of Award
5-2022
Document Type
Scholarly Project
Degree Name
Master of Physician Assistant Studies (MPAS)
Department
Physician Assistant Studies
First Advisor
Julie Solberg
Keywords
Anxiety; Pharmacological interventions; Non-pharmacological interventions
Recommended Citation
Sperl, Rachel, "Anxiety Treatment in Health Science and Medical Students" (2022). Physician Assistant Scholarly Project Papers. 119.
https://commons.und.edu/pas-grad-papers/119
Comments
Health professionals are seeing a rise in anxiety among health science and medical students, which can be multifactorial. The purpose of this review is to investigate the use of pharmacological, non-pharmacological, and a combination of the two that can be utilized to treat patients with anxiety. A comprehensive literature review was performed using a variety of electronic search databases and included many different keywords. Articles were limited to the past 10 years to include the most recent changes in this last decade. Exclusion criteria included periodicals, editorials, and articles published before 2011. Research studies were further narrowed by limiting the target population to medical and health science collegiate students, and eliminating articles without specific discussion of anxiety, intervention, or therapy. After removing research articles that met the exclusion criteria, 25 studies met the inclusion criteria. The studies focused on pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatment for anxiety, combination of interventions, and provider and patient preference of the different treatments. Many of the articles focused on the different pharmacological and non-pharmacological treatments that are currently being used for these patients. Upon conclusion of the literature review, a gap in the literature was found when comparing pharmacological and nonpharmacological treatments. Further research needs to be carried out in this area, specifically looking at using the two treatments together.