Prevalence of imposter phenomenon and its correlates among undergraduate medical students of a government medical college, West Bengal, India
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.3126/ajms.v15i4.60976Keywords:
Imposter syndrome; Perfectionism; Medical education; Indian medical graduate; Clance IP scaleAbstract
Background: The prevalence of imposter phenomenon (IP) is more among students, engineers, health-care-professionals, and researchers. Medical students are particularly predisposed to IP due to stressors like a highly competitive environment both preceding and during medical education.
Aims and Objectives: The aims and objectives of the study are to find out the prevalence of IP among undergraduate medical students of a Medical College of Eastern India and to elicit the relationship between background factors and IP.
Materials and Methods: One hundred and thirty medical students were selected by stratified random sampling from all four semesters. Twenty point Clance IP scale was used to measure IP. It contains 20 questions, each of them having five options. A score between “60 and 80” indicates frequent imposter syndrome and a score higher than 80 indicates intense imposter feeling. After conducting descriptive analysis, ordinal logistic regression was conducted.
Results: Among the study subjects 37.7% had frequent imposter feelings and 10.8% had intense imposter feelings. High level of IP (frequent and intense combined) is more common among second-semester students, females, middle class, those who sleep >56 h/week, who perceived their school performance was good, who have a family history of psychiatric illness, and who take some kind of chronic medication. As per Ordinal regression, second-semester, middle class, good school performance, and history of chronic medication were found to be significant predictors of higher degree IP.
Conclusion: The prevalence of IP is alarming among medical students and it is high time to address this before it turns into graver psychiatric morbidity.
Downloads
21
17
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
Copyright (c) 2024 Asian Journal of Medical Sciences
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.
Authors who publish with this journal agree to the following terms:
- The journal holds copyright and publishes the work under a Creative Commons CC-BY-NC license that permits use, distribution and reprduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited and is not used for commercial purposes. The journal should be recognised as the original publisher of this work.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).
