Students' self-ratings of stress in medical school: a replication across 20 months.

We replicated the essential results of a prior study on the capacity of the BAROMAS scales to reflect stress in medical school as perceived by students. As before, subjective stress was high at the start of medical school, and when facing the exams prerequisite to entry into clinical clerkships. On most measures, stress was lowest when the second year began (i.e. after having passed the first). Once again, most test-retest reliabilities (significant rs ranged from 0.24 to 0.66 for confidence ratings at 12- and 20-months after entry) were moderate.