Research awareness among medical students: a student's perspective

This is an era of extremely fast growing concepts replacing the old ones with new projections. In this overwhelming world of information [RESEARCH] is the only way to compete and compre-hend new thoughts. The word Research as perceived by general population is making any new discovery. The same goes for methodology of research that it is done in high tech laboratories provided with lot of expertise further adds up to neglect towards research. The lack of awareness, innovation and appreciation on part of both workers and population has limited the number of research projects in our country. 1. To compare the research awareness among students of preclinical [PC] and clinical [C] years 2. To compare the research awareness among students of public and private sector medical colleges. A cross-sectional study. JMDC, Sep-Oct, 2004. Responses to a questionnaire from a total of I 400 students [160 PC and 240 C] were analyzed using percentage and student's t-test methods. Study included response of 10 students from 1[st] till finalyear of MBBS course from three public sector [Pub] [DMC, SMC, KMDC] and five private sector [Pvt] Medical Colleges [JMDC, ZMU, AKUH, Baqai and Hamdard Med University]. Only 54.55% of the students were aware about the description of research, [57.08%, 50.75%clinical and preclinical respectively]. Comparatively more students from Pvt sector were aware about research and its methodologies [Pvt 55.2% vs Pub 48.13% p<0.05]. Students from the clinical years think that lack of awareness to research and its methodologies is the most important cause [C 25.4% vs PC 9.4% p< 0.05] while students from private sector accused unavailability of funds as the major problem [Pvt 36.8% vs Pub 28.0% p<0.05].1. Teaching biostatistics and research methodologies have a crucial outcome on the awareness of research. 2. Implementing COME/PBL in private sector medical colleges has remarkably amplified the knowledge about research in the medical students. 3. Sequentially downhill the students chose lack of supervision, funds and knowledge about the subject as the main reasons for doctors not conducting research

Effect of problem based learning in basic medical sciences

Jinnah Medical and Dental College is a private institution determined to train inethcal students into competent and humane doctors. The college is affiliated with University of Karachi and observes the conventional type of MBBS curriculum with two years of basic and three yecirs of clinical science training. Biochemistry is the basic medical science course, which is introduced in fIrst two years. Learning biochemistry has been passive through lecture-based strategy. Through problem based learning [PBL] students are actively involved and recognize deficiencies in their knowledge qf basic sciences and f ill up the gaps via self-learning. [l] To identify the attitude of students towards learning of basic medical course [Biochemistry] in innovative curriculum with PBL as the principle mode of information transfer, [2] To compare the university results of the students trained through two curricula. A cross-sectional analytical study. Jinnah Medical and Dental College, Karachi during the academic year 2003 - 2004. Fifty-four students of batch -4 were asked to fill an anonymous questionnaire regarding 30 PBL sessions they were exposed to, during the academic year March 2003 till January 2004. The responses were analyzed using Chi-Square test. The results of first professional part B MBBS annual examination conducted by university of Karachi for batch - 3 [n=71] and 4 [n=54] were compared using student's t-test. Statistical analysis was done using SPSS version 10.0. Significant number of the students found PBL as a useful study aid and agreed that basic science knowledge is applicable and can easily he correlated with the clinical science knowledge [87% and 79.62%, p<0.05]. These sessions helped them to internalize habit of giving evidence-based answers and enabled them to acquire habit of doing positive criticism in group-discussions and to tolerate it patiently [88.8%, 87%, p<0.05]. Them was significant difference between the results of two classes exposed to conventional and problem-based curricula [p<0.05], probably it is due to the method of examination, which is totally conventional. The study results strongly favour introduction of problem-based learning as the mode of information transfer in basic sciences, but it should be implemented in combination with the traditional learning methods to provide effective training to the undergraduate medical students