Willingness to volunteer of medical students during the COVID-19 pandemic: Assessment at a tertiary care hospital in India

Abstract

Background and ObjectivesThe involvement of medical students in strategies to control COVID-19 might be considered to cope with the shortage of healthcare workers. This study aims at assessing the level of knowledge about COVID-19, willingness to volunteer, potential areas of involvement and reasons for deterrence towards volunteering among medical students.MethodsA cross-sectional study was conducted among undergraduate medical students of a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi. A web-based questionnaire was used to elicit demographic information, knowledge of COVID-19, willingness to volunteer and reasons for deterrence for working during COVID-19 pandemic and self-declared knowledge in six domains.ResultsA total of 292 students participated in the study with a mean age of 19.9±3.1 years. The mean (S.D.) knowledge score of COVID-19 was 6.9 (1.1) (maximum score 10). Knowledge score was significantly different among preclinical (6.5), paraclinical (7.18), and clinical groups (7.03). Almost three fourth (75.3%) participants were willing to volunteer in COVID-19 pandemic, though 67.8% had not received any training in emergency medicine or public health crisis management. Willingness to work was maximum in areas of social work and indirect patient care (62.3% each). Lack of personal protective equipment was cited as a highly deterrent factor for volunteering (62.7%) followed by fear of transmitting the infection to family (45.9%), fear of causing harm to the patient (34.2%), and absence of treatment (22.2%).Interpretation & conclusionsMajority of the students were willing to volunteer even though they had not received adequate training. Students may serve as an auxiliary force during the pandemic, especially in the non-clinical setting.

Knowledge of COVID-19 and Willingness to Participate in Medical Response to It among Clinical-Level Medical Students in a Nigerian University

“…Similarly that gender significantly affect willingness to participate with males being more willing to participate appears to be in line with the empirical observation that males were generally more daring than the females. Our finding that males are more willing than females contrasts with findings from other studies [24,25]. The implication of these findings for practice is that should there arise the need to recruit medical students to participate in COVID-19 response there should be stratification of the students in each of the variable that shows statistically significant relationship with willingness to participate.…”

“…The implication of these findings for practice is that should there arise the need to recruit medical students to participate in COVID-19 response there should be stratification of the students in each of the variable that shows statistically significant relationship with willingness to participate. The types of tasks our respondents were willing to participate in are similar to findings from other studies [22,24,26]. Similarly the reasons for willingness and for unwillingness to participate are also similar to those given by participants in other studies [22,24,26].…”

“…The types of tasks our respondents were willing to participate in are similar to findings from other studies [22,24,26]. Similarly the reasons for willingness and for unwillingness to participate are also similar to those given by participants in other studies [22,24,26].…”

Az elkötelezettek, a csalódottak, a tapasztalatszerzők és akik megpróbálták : Az orvos- és egészségtudományi hallgatók Covid-19 járvány alatti önkéntességének vizsgálata

“…A pandémia alatt önkéntes orvos-és egészségtudományi szakos hallgatók mintája nem volt homogén. Egyfelől, nemcsak szakonként, hanem -a szakirodalmi eredményekkel (Astorp et al 2021;Michno et al 2021;Sra et al 2021) egyezően -évfolyamcsoportonként is különbséget mutattak az önkéntességre való felkészítésük jellegében, önkénteselköteleződésükben és az önkéntesség pozitív és negatív tapasztalatainak megítélésében.…”

“…13 A nemzetközi szakirodalomban az önkéntes orvostanhallgatók COVID-19 járvány leküzdésében játszott szerepéről 2020 második felében jelentek meg az első, vitákat és gyakorlati tapasztalatokat feldolgozó esettanulmányok (például: Ahmed et al 2020;Bukland 2020;Drexler et al 2020;Glikman et al 2020;Long et al 2020;Miller et al 2020;Riva et al 2020;Soled et al 2020). Ezeket követték 2021 elejétől fogva azok a tanulmányok, amelyek egy-egy ország, illetve egyetem orvostanhallgatóinak kérdőíves megkérdezésen alapultak, és különböző kutatási nézőpontból igyekeztek feltárni az orvostanhallgatók önkéntességének tapasztalatait és problémáit (Adjemi et al 2021;Bazan et al 2021;Byrne et al 2021;Lazarus et al 2021;Manraj et al 2021;Michno et al 2021;Shi et al 2021) Tanulmányunknak, amely Magyarországon először foglalkozik az orvos-és egészségtudományi hallgatók önkéntességének 14 vizsgálatával, három fő célja van.…”