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

ABSTRACT

BACKGROUND The involvement of medical students in strategies to control Covid-19 might be considered to cope with the shortage of healthcare workers. We assessed the knowledge about Covid-19, willingness to volunteer, potential areas of involvement and reasons for hesitation among medical students towards volunteering. METHODS We did this cross-sectional study among undergraduate students at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi. We used a web-based questionnaire to elicit demographic information, knowledge of Covid-19, willingness to volunteer and reasons deterring them from working during the Covid-19 pandemic, and self-declared knowledge in six domains. RESULTS A total of 292 students participated in the study with a mean (SD) age of 19.9 (3.1) years. The mean (SD) 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 the 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 deterring factor for volunteering (62.7%) followed by fear of transmitting the infection to family members (45.9%), fear of causing harm to the patient (34.2%) and the absence of available treatment (22.2%). CONCLUSIONS A majority 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 non-clinical settings.