At the end of 2008 the Student Support and Accompaniment Office (GAPAE), in collaboration with the laboratory of Medical Psychology, carried out a “Psycho-pedagogical Support for FMUL Students” programme. This support, aimed at 1st and 2nd year students, intended to cover the most common problems of academic adaptation and grant them with practical strategies in order to overcome, or minimise, the difficulties and constraints arising from the processes of adaptation. Academic adaptation demands of the student a capacity to respond to all the adversities and conditioning factors that are intrinsic to any changes that entering university implies.
The transition from Secondary Education to Higher Education is an important stage in the student’s personal development. It is a change, and thus a challenge, which implies establishing autonomy in relation to the family, to time and money management, and opening up to a wider social contact, etc. Academic adapting is also sometimes threatening, being capable of provoking high levels of stress and anxiety, or even incapacity to positively deal with all the alterations it entails.

Entering university may be a challenging and stimulating stage, but it also may be somewhat disturbing, bringing about imbalances and maladjustments related to physical and psychological health. It is necessary to act within a preventive perspective that attempts to facilitate academic adaptation, as the first year of university may be considered as a critical period.

In 2006 GAPAE carried out a study, “Difficulties in Academic Adaptation by 1st Year Students at the FMUL”, which aimed at characterising the degree of academic adaptation by students attending the first year in the three first degree courses lectured at the FMUL (PowerPoint slides can be seen on http://www.fm.ul.pt/FMLPortal/UserFiles/File/Estudo.ppt with a summary available on http://www.fm.ul.pt/index.html#3019). An instrument (QVA-r) was used, which allowed one to identify the perceptions and experiences of the students during the adaptation process. This was a first attempt that aimed at identifying the difficulties perceived by students in this phase. One of the conclusions that we took from this study was that the 1st year of Medicine had lower scores in the Study and Interpersonal dimensions, with it being necessary to draw up intervention strategies in order to support students in their different difficulties in adaptation, with the skills of study and time management being the greatest difficulties felt by Medicine students.

Psycho-pedagogical Support for FMUL Students was an action that intended to promote psychological wellbeing, success and academic adjustment, taking into account the difficulties identified in the previously mention study and the high number of students living away from home in the current 1st Year in the Integrated Masters Course in Medicine. The away from home student is often more vulnerable to feelings of isolation and loneliness through having no support, through there being no local social networks, or very loose ones. For this group of people change is even greater than for the students who live locally, and so they are considered as a high-risk group.

In the current first year of the Integrated Masters in Medicine there is a percentage of 46.97% (n=163) of away-from-home students, which is a very significant number, given that the total number of students enrolled is 347. For more information on the criterion that indicates the number of students away from home, as well as the regional districts in Portugal from which the first year students come, click  here.

A significant aspect was the fact that all the students who attended this Psycho-pedagogical Support Event were students living away from home, which corroborates the idea that this is a group that needs greater support.

Psycho-pedagogical Support was set up in seven sessions carried out in group dynamics, in an informal atmosphere leading to the debating of the problems and difficulties felt by the nineteen students who joined the group. (For more information about the characteristics of the group, click here) The sessions took place in a phase in which the first year students had entered the FMUL a very short time before, but which had allowed them to experience the problems, constraints and difficulties of a university environment.

The aim of this event was to bring about strategies for management of stress/anxiety and time, to promote psychological well-being and to support students in their entering of the academic world, developing autonomy, and reinforcing their personal relationship skills.

The students verbalised the difficulties they felt in this phase of adapting:
• Adapting to the condition of the away-from-home student, missing out on social networks;
• Difficulties in managing stress arising from the demands of the subjects;
• Difficulty in managing time so as to be able to get all their work done on time, as well as all the necessary study (lack of self-discipline);
• High levels of anxiety in relation to exams, symptoms of depression and phobias;
• Excessively high expectations and pressure by the family, to which they state they have some difficulties in living up to.

Some of the issues dealt with in the sessions were:
• Stress and Anxiety Management;
• Healthy Competition;
• Development of Creativity and Autonomy.

The programme involved an open session that allowed students to choose a subject/issue. The students who chose time management, stress and anxiety management identified them as the most common difficulties felt by the whole group, feeling a need to acquire practical strategies to deal with these difficulties.

We believe that this Psycho-Pedagogical Support initiative enriched the group members, granting them with practical strategies in order to deal with the most common difficulties in this phase, helping them to develop the skills necessary for adaptation and academic success. We intend to carry on with this kind of event for future first year students and to extend it to more advanced students, given that it is clear to see that there are high levels of stress and anxiety among students of medicine, which might lessen or impede academic success.