Abstract

Objective: To investigate the effect of gender and study course affiliation on the self- esteem of the participants.
Methodology: This cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at Azra Naheed Medical College, Lahore, Pakistan from April 2020 to June 2020. Students from three health related disciplines (MBBS, Physiotherapy and Allied health sciences) participated in the study by completing a Google form developed for the study. Rosenberg self-esteem scale (RSES) was used. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) was used to study the effects of correlates on self-esteem.
Results: A total of 1419 students participated in this study (60.6% females). These included 328 MBBS students, 818 Allied health sciences students and 273 physiotherapy students. Mean RSES score was 17.96 and 14.98% students had low scores on RSES (below the cut-off of 15). An item-wise analysis of RSES showed that female students scored significantly lower than male students on 5 of the 10 RSES items. MBBS students scored significantly lower than allied health sciences and physiotherapy students (p=0.002).
Conclusions: Studying in the discipline of MBBS and being female are risk factors for low self-esteem among students of health-related disciplines.

Key words: Self-esteem, medical students, gender differences.