Free time for medical students is limited, but making an effort to engage in a hobby that takes you out of the clinical realm—and out of your own head—can pay dividends for well-being.
Research presented during the 2025 AMA Interim Meeting Poster Showcase offered evidence that meaningful hobbies that connect students to something outside of medicine can play a real role in managing anxiety and preserving well-being.
In her poster—"Cultivating calm: Evaluating the efficacy of gardening to reduce anxiety levels in medical students”—medical student Betsy Barrueta examined gardening as a potential outlet to help future physicians cope with academic stress.
The results were encouraging. Among the 32 students who participated in an eight-week study for which they were asked to garden around two hours, medical students experienced a reduction in anxiety symptoms such as sweating and palpitations.
Roots in gardening
For Barrueta, an AMA member, an interest in gardening can be traced back to her younger years as a student in Cuba.
“When we were in middle school back there, we used to have a garden in the back of the school,” said Barrueta, a second-year medical student at Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine’s Bradenton, Florida, campus. “Every month we had to plant new plants.”
The poster cited data that moderate to severe anxiety affects around one in three medical students—a figure that is significantly higher than that of the general population. Anxiety in medical students is associated with academic difficulties, higher dropout rates and reduced empathy.
“Now as medical students, we face a great amount of anxiety,” Barrueta said. “I was interested in seeing if whatever I did as a kid could help me and my peers as well.”
In seeking to determine if gardening could play a role in anxiety reduction, Barrueta and the poster’s co-authors conducted an eight-week study enrolling 32 medical students. Participants were asked to spend two hours per week gardening—simple activities like digging, watering and tending plants.
After eight weeks, students reported fewer physical signs of anxiety, like sweating or a racing heartbeat. More participants marked “no symptoms” after the gardening period than before it, suggesting that the time in the garden made a difference in how their bodies responded to stress.
The value in a hobby
As highlighted in an AMA STEPS Forward® toolkit—“Medical Student Well-Being: Minimize Burnout and Improve Mental Health Among Medical Students”—engaging in recreation and hobbies is an individual intervention that medical students can employ to reduce burnout.
In examining the anxiety assuaging impact of gardening as a hobby, Barrueta believes it may have a similar impact to activities such as mindfulness meditation and yoga. Prior research has found that plants release a chemical called phytoncides. These have also been shown to decrease sympathetic and increase parasympathetic activity, resulting in more calm, Barrueta said.
Many of the positive effects of a hobby are intangible. For instance, gardening could impact self-esteem, Barrueta said.
“The fact that you are in nature planting more things, you’re sort of mixing self-help while helping the environment,” she said.
As a hobby, gardening offers an activity that is both time- and cost-efficient.
“One of the reasons why we research specifically gardening is because it's more of a cost-effective and nonpharmacological alternative to dealing with anxiety, especially for medical students who don't have enough time because of studying and also already have a financial burden with medical school as it is,” Barrueta said.
Still, there are barriers to implementation. Not everyone has a garden. At present, Barrueta’s own “garden” is small but intentional. What matters is that it’s hers and tending to it has become part of her routine.
“Right now, my garden is an aloe vera plant and a mint tea plant on my windowsill,” she said. “It’s nice. When I’m drinking tea, I can just grab my own.”
