Introduction: Health field per se requires mental, physical and psychological steadiness and wellbeing. In modern times decline in psychological and physical health has been observed in student after admission in health education program. Factors like perfectionism, self-esteem, personal and professional consequence have affected their academic score directly or indirectly. Life Orientation Test-Revised (LOT-R) instrument measures optimism in relation to self-esteem of individual. A better score will show more confidence level of the student.
Aim: To find an association of LOT-R with the academic score of health professional students and assess gender variation.
Materials and methods: A total of 350 students enrolled for academic year 2015-16 in health professional program of medicine, dental and physiotherapy institutes of Sumandeep Vidyapeeth University were considered. Non-randomized and purposive study was done by providing LOT-R questionnaire to students. Average academic score of Anatomy and Physiology course was used for analysis excluding the biochemistry due to non-availability of tangible data at the time of study. Data was collected, analysed statistically using independent t-test, ANOVA with post-hoc and correlation analysis.
Result: Statistical significant for one-way ANOVA was assessed for academic score between the group of health professional students. While no statistical correlation of significance was observed for LOT-R score with that of academic score. As per gender distribution there was no statistical significant observation for LOT-R score within the groups.
Conclusion: The present study highlighted the need of student's counseling for their approach towards health education; as their career. Psychological self-reliance and optimism improves the academic score. A study needs to be compared with the socio-economic status of the student to have a better understanding of the LOT-R.
Keywords: Educational performance; Optimism; Self-esteem.