Psychological well-being of students taking health degree courses

Abstract

Introduction: Health degree courses in Chile have seen an increase in interest and matriculations in the last 10 years. The challenge now is to take into account the diversity of studentprofiles. At this stage, it is essential to know the socio-emotional and psycho-pedagogical features of those who will be in charge of developing a plan for people’s care, in order to supportthem during their professional development.

Objectives: To identify the level of psychological well-being of health area students in a publicuniversity in southern Chile.

Method: This descriptive, cross-sectional study was developed using a positivist approach. Itincluded 190 volunteer health students of both genders with a mean age of 20.94 (SD = 3.17).Ryff’s Psychological well-being scale (1989) was used. This scale has six dimensions, (a) Environ-mental mastery, (b) Purpose in life, (c) Autonomy, (d) Positive relations, (e) Self-acceptance,and (f) Personal growth.The values of internal consistency (Cronbach’s alpha) of the scale dimensions go from 0.68to 0.78.

Results: The results show that 40.6% stated to be clear about their purpose in life. However,41.7% has a deficit level of positive relationships with the environment, 26.6% declared a lowlevel of autonomy, and 25.3% a low level of personal growth. The women had a higher mean inpositive relationships, environmental mastery, and personal growth dimensions. The men havea higher mean in autonomy.

Conclusions: The results indicate that universities should provide mechanisms to support thesocio-affective development of their health degree students.