Physiological and hygienic substantiation of the difficulty of specialized hygienic disciplines in the training program for students of the medical and preventive faculty

Introduction. The health of medical students is a necessary condition for the formation of competent professionals in the field of prevention. One of the factors ensuring the preservation of students’ health is the physiologically sound management of the educational process at the university, which requires an assessment of the difficulty of the disciplines of the curriculum. The lack of elaboration of this issue leads to errors in planning the academic load, mental and emotional overstrain and acts as a risk factor for reducing the health of students. Material and Methods. The study was conducted on the basis of the Faculty of Medicine and Prevention of the Ryazan State Medical University named after Academician I.P. Pavlov. The object of the study was 5-year students (fifty seven people). According to the results of a sociological study, the difficulty of communal hygiene, occupational hygiene, food hygiene, hygiene of children and adolescents, and the duration of extracurricular self-training were studied. The students’ performance was studied by the method of proof-reading studies using the Anfimov tables daily in the course of the academic week (Monday to Friday) at the beginning and end of the practical lesson. Results. The study showed significantly less difficulty for students to study the hygiene in children and adolescents (4 points) compared with food, labour, and communal hygiene, the difficulty of which had similar values (6.3–6.5 points). The revealed differences in difficulty according to the results of self-assessment correlated well with the duration of extracurricular self-training and were confirmed by reliable direct correlations. The increase in the average coefficient of working capacity in students in the course of the academic week in classes on hygiene of children and adolescents, as well as a significant increase in the proportion of students with a decrease in working capacity in classes on food hygiene and communal hygiene on Friday compared with Mondays confirm the revealed differences in difficulties according to subjective self-assessment. Limitations. The objectives of the study did not include studying the factors influencing students’ subjective assessment of the difficulty of the subjects studied. Conclusion. Consequently, the results of self-assessment of the difficulty of the studied disciplines, supplemented by data from the timing of extracurricular self-training, can be used to build scales of difficulty of specialized academic disciplines at the medical and Preventive Faculty of the medical University.