Knowledge, attitude and practices studies conducted amongst medical students of India

Abstract

INTRODUCTIONResearch is a critical component in progress and prosperity of institution or nations and inter-alia prevents them from rusting, decay and decline. The research environment in developing countries including India is witnessing a slow but positive rise. In this context, irrespective of research subjects, a total of 157 researchers per million populations were reported in India in 2010, much less than the global average of 1023. Similarly, India scored 12th position among the productive countries of the world in medicine during 1999-2008 with a mere 1.6% share in the world research output.2 Another recent study revealed that out of 579 recognized medical institutions, 57% did not produce a single research paper in indexed journal during the period ABSTRACT Background: Assessment of published original "KAP" based research studies conducted amongst Indian medical undergraduate students. Methods: A systematic evaluation was undertaken using keywords "KAP" or "knowledge" or "awareness" or "attitude" or "practices" and "MBBS students" or "medical students" or "health students" or "undergraduate student" or "university students" and "India" through search engines, PUBMED and Google scholar under certain criteria. Results: Highest, "KAP" based articles amongst MBBS students published during one-year period were related to Pharmacovigilance (15.6%) followed by organ/blood donation (11.7%) and self-medication (9.8%), tobacco (5.8%), and basic life support (5.8%) etc; 48 (94.1%) article was one-time cross-sectional descriptive studies while 03 (5.8%) had intervention based research design. Average no. of authors per article was 3.5 (±1.3); Medical student was coauthor in 04 (7.8%) research papers. Corresponding author was largely dominated by faculties from pre and paraclinical departments with highest from pharmacology (29.4%) and community medicine (27.4%). The studies covered an average sample size of 225.8 MBBS students (45-648, range) per research article. Avg. no. of references used/article was 18.6 (±7.4); Out of all the references used in research articles, only 60.2% were of recent-10 year time frame (2007)(2008)(2009)(2010)(2011)(2012)(2013)(2014)(2015)(2016) origin while the rest were from older time-frame and only 36.1% of all the references were of Indian origin. Conclusions: Probably, first of its kind systemic synthesis undertaken in the country concludes that diverse topics of "KAP" research have been conducted by the teaching faculties on MBBS students in India and this study provides the over-view of the same.