Résumé
The dental school with its strict academic and clinical requirements is often regarded as a highly pressurized difficult environment for students. The stresses of the learning environment may have undesirable consequences, the most important of which is the impairment of effective intellectual function and detriment to learning. Severe depression and anxiety with or without physical symptoms can immobilize students, making them ineffective in dealing with the demands of a difficult academic curriculum. Hence, educators need to be more concerned about the quality of the learning environment which should be engineered carefully in order to maximize each student's learning potential. For such an objective to be accomplished, the perceived problems and potential sources of stress to dental students should be identified. Thus, the aim of the present study was to provide comprehensive information about the perceived problems of dental students with particular emphasis on sex, academic year and school achievement in terms of grade in previous year. A comprehensive dental student problems questionnaire including a list of 64 problem items covering 8 major problem areas related to the different aspects of the educational process and taking account of the student's life situation, interpersonal relationships and personal feelings and behavior was developed. A total of 348 students [183 males and 165 females] completed the questionnaire, with approximately 50% participation from each academic year. The results of the study revealed that students in the Alexandria Faculty of Dentistry exhibited a more or less similar spectrum of perceived problems compared to dental students in other countries. The problem areas identified as most stressful by the majority of students in all academic years were those related to the evaluation system and to time. Problems related to the academic and clinical aspects of the educational process were perceived to be more stressful than those related to life situation and interpersonal relationships. For the different academic years, variations in ranking of problem items within most problem areas could be detected reflecting differences in the academic and clinical requirements of each academic year. Sex and school achievement in terms of grade in previous year were not found to be significantly related to the averages of percentages of students reporting being considerably or severely stressed by the different problem areas. Several recommendations were given in an attempt to reduce the stress bearing upon -dental students by improving the quality of the educational environment, hence maximizing the students learning potential