v ::INDO AMERICAN JOURNAL OF PHARMACEUTICAL SCIENCES::
ResearcherID - CLICK HERE Scientific Journal Impact Factor (SJIF-2020) - CLICK HERE

TITLE:

ARE PAKISTANI MEDICAL STUDENTS READY AND TO WHAT EXTENT?:KNOWLEDGE, ATTITUDE AND PRACTICE DURING THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC: A CROSS-SECTIONAL STUDY ON MEDICAL STUDENTS OF PUNJAB, PAKISTAN

AUTHORS:

Dr. Irum Hayat, Dr. Muhammad Waseem, Dr. Farooq Usman, Maryam Asghar, Waqar Ali, Rabiya Rasheed

ABSTRACT:

Background: COVID-19 is one of the most severe and lethal pandemics ever seen by the world. Whole world generally while education sector specifically are badly affected by this. Medical students also felt the Wrath of this pandemic. Objective: “To assess the knowledge, attitude and practice of medical students in Punjab, Pakistan.” Study Design: A cross-sectional, descriptive, observational study design. Duration: Study was conducted from March 2020 to May 2020. Study Place: Medical Education Department, Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur. Material and Methods: Sample size during the study period consisted of total 591 undergraduate medical students from different medical colleges of Punjab, Pakistan. Ethical issue: Ehtical approval was taken from ethical approval committee of Quaid-e-Azam Medical College, Bahawalpur. Sampling technique: It was non-probability “convenient sampling method.” Data analysis: Data was analyzed through SPSS- version 20 and different frequencies were calculated. Results: A total of 591 medical students of Punjab, Pakistan participated in the study; out of which 436(73.77%) were females and 154(26.05%) were males. The knowledge of medical students was scored on a scale of 0-21. A large proportion of students (79.53%) had good knowledge, 20.30% had average knowledge while 0.002% belonged to poor knowledge category. Final year students had higher score (83.42% belonged to good knowledge category) than their juniors. The attitude of the participants was scored on a scale of 0-6 with 78.34% of the participants having positive attitude. Overall, more males (81.8%) had positive attitude than females (77%). The practice of medical students regarding COVID-19 was scored on a scale of 0-7. The majority of the students (81.22%) had good practice while 15.57% and 3.21% of the students belonged to average and poor practice category respectively. Conclusion: Our study showed that overall, medical students demonstrated moderate level of knowledge about COVID-19 (levels were lower in juniors) which surely affected their attitude and practice towards COVID-19 pandemic. However, in some aspects, participants had decreased knowledge, attitude and practice levels which highlights the need of targeted awareness and education programs. Keywords: Knowledge, Attitude Practice; Undergraduate students; COVID-19.

FULL TEXT

Top
  • Follows us on
Creative Commons License This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License.