Abstract: Objective To explore the current stress status of medical graduate students and the distribution of stress sources. Secondly, the differences of stressors in gender, grade, only child and marital status variables among medical graduate students were investigated. Methods A questionnaire survey was conducted among medical graduate students from 13 provinces (including municipalities directly under the Central Government) in China by using the Graduate stressors scale. Results It was found that 57.6% of 1,216 medical graduate students thought they were stressed and it was regular. The top three sources of stress were education, employment and the economy.In terms of gender, male medical graduate students were more stressed than women in interpersonal communication (p<0.01), economy (p<0.01) and marriage and being in love (p<0.001). In terms of grade, the overall pressure of doctoral students was higher than that of master's degree and eight-year graduate students (p<0.001). The pressure of only-child medical graduate students in interpersonal communication (p<0.05) and marriage and being in love (p<0.01) was higher than that of non-only children. Compared with married medical graduate students, unmarried medical graduate students were under greater financial pressure (p<0.05). Conclusions At present, medical graduate students are under pressure from many aspects. the research results provide a scientific basis for the training and health education of medical graduate students, and provide a new reference for improving the training model of national medical graduate students.

Key words: medical graduate student, stressors