The Effects of Internship on Psychosocial and Health-Related Parameters in University Students of Different Departments

The aim of our study was to compare the interns students who studied at the Departments/Faculties of Nursing, Physiotherapy, Dentistry, and Veterinary and went to clinical practice for at least 1-semester during the pandemic period in terms of fear-of-catching covid-19, quality-of-life and sleep-quality, depression, fatigue, and burnout-levels.This study was carried out on internship students (IG) as registered in four-different departments including Nursing, Dentistry, Physiotherapy, and Veterinary at least four months. In addition, the students registered in the same departments who had never participated in any internship program before were included in the study as control group (CG). 318 last-year internship students and 234 students who did not participate in any internship program, totally 552 students as registered in four-different departments participated in the study. There were statistically significant differences between the all four departments for IG in terms of fear-of-covid-19 (p=0.037), sleep quality (p=0.001), depression (p=0.001), and fatigue (p=0.035). While only quality of life (p=0.022), depression (p=0.040), and burnout (p=0.001) scores significantly differed between gender in IG, no significant differences were observed for dependent variables by gender in CG (p>0.05). In conclusion, this study has revealed that depression and sleep quality level is worse in physiotherapy, nursing, and dentistry interns compared to those of veterinary. We also conclude that the nursing interns were affected more than the nursing students without internship in terms of quality of life and sleep, fatigue, and burnout. Lastly, the results of this study showed that quality of life, depression, and burnout in female interns are worse than male interns.