Blood Pressure and Pulse Rate Variability Before and After Practical Examination in Medical Students

Blood pressure and pulse rate varies during stressful situations like examination and more common among 1st year medical students. Many factors affect the stress levels in medical students like curriculum related, examination pattern, environmental factors in the campus etc. Hence, it is important to assess and prevent the stress among the medical students who are future doctors. Study aims and objectives were to study the blood pressure and pulse rate variability before and after practical examination in 1st year MBBS students. This was a cross-sectional study conducted on 1st year medical students of both gender. The study protocol was approved by the Institutional Research Committee (IRC) and Institutional Human Ethics Committee (IHEC) and prior written informed consent was obtained from all the study participants. The study included 79 students after considering inclusion and exclusion criteria. Blood pressure and pulse rate were measured in participants just before and after appearing for 2nd sessional practical examination. Rate pressure product was also calculated and finally the pulse rate, blood pressure recordings, RPP before and after practical examination were compared. P value less than 0.05 was considered statistically significant. Paired t test was used to find the statistical significance. GraphPad Instat version 3.06, 32 bit for Windows (GraphPad Software, San Diego, California USA) was used to analyze the data. The mean systolic blood pressure before and after practical examination was 130.41 and 126.53 respectively, the mean diastolic blood pressure was 85.80 and 84.63 respectively, the mean pulse rate was 88.89 and 79.95 respectively and mean RPP was 11.67 and 10.15 respectively. In our study we found significant increase in systolic blood pressure, diastolic blood pressure, pulse rate as well as RPP before practical examination when compared to after practical examination, may be due to pre-examination anxiety. This study concluded that there is statistically significant increase in blood pressure, pulse rate and rate pressure product before practical examination in 1st year medical students.