La educación virtual durante la pandemia de COVID-19 y su impacto en la salud mental de estudiantes de medicina humana de una universidad de Chiclayo, Perú

Objective: Determine the perception of virtual education and its relationship with the mental health of human medicine students at a university in Chiclayo, Peru, during the COVID-19 health emergency. Methods: Observational, cross-sectional analytical study in a probabilistic sample of 104 students. Two questionnaires were applied: one measured virtual education from 12 valid and reliable items (α=0.98), and the other a self-report questionnaire (SQR) that measured mental health from 28 items and high reliability (α= 0.90). Results: The sample was characterized by an average age of 23.9 years and a predominance of women (61.5%). The perception of virtual education was bad in 35.6%, regular in 34.6% and good in 29.8%; Likewise, 44.2% presented high risk and 55.8% without mental health risk. An inverse correlation was observed between the “skills” dimension of virtual education with mental health risk (p=0.048, Rho= -0.27); but not with the general perception of virtual education. Conclusions: More than half of the students perceived virtual education as bad or average, which was not related to the greater mental health risk in them.