ABSTRACT
Background. India is currently experiencing a shortage of medical personnel to provide COVID-19 relief services among the population. The government came up with a proposal of involving final-year medical students to solve this problem. However, before initiating any such measures, the perspectives of medical students towards this initiative need to be assessed.Objectives. To assess the perception of medical students regarding their self-preparedness and willingness to volunteer in COVID-19 relief activities.Material and methods. This was a cross-sectional study conducted among medical undergraduate students in their third and fourth year at two private medical colleges. Data was collected using a semi-structured Google Form. The perceptions of the participants were assessed using a five-point Likert scale.Results. The mean age of the 204 participants was 21.6 +/- 1.1 years. Only 37 (18.1%) participants had good perception regarding their self-preparedness. As many as 116 (56.9%) participants strongly agreed/agreed, while 39 (19.1%) strongly disagreed/disagreed about their willingness to volunteer in COVID-19 relief activities. The most common reason for agreement among the participants was to make up for the current shortage of healthcare professionals, while for disagreement, it was the feeling of not being fully qualified. Third year students reported better self-preparedness (p = 0.0371). Good perception regarding self-preparedness was associated with strong agreement or agreement about a willingness to involve themselves in COVID-19 relief activities (p = 0.0123).Conclusions. Although more than half of the participants were willing to volunteer, only one-fifth of the participants had good per-ception regarding their self-preparedness to offer relief services. Thus there is a need for training before involving final-year medical students in COVID-19 relief activities.
ABSTRACT
PurposeOver the past decades, many health authorities and public policy experts have traditionally relied on indicators that are dependent on a nation's economy, its health-care infrastructure advancements, and superiority in biomedical sciences and technology to predict potential infection rates should a health pandemic occur. One such commonly relied-upon indicator was that of the Global Health Security (GHS) Index. However, the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has shown how such variables prove to be inaccurate in predicting the infection rates during a global health pandemic. Hence, this paper proposes the utilization of socio-cultural behavioral traits to predict a country's COVID-19 infection rates.Design/methodology/approachThis is achieved by proposing a model involving the classification and regression tree (CART) algorithm and a Poisson regression against the six selected cultural behavioral predictors consisting of individualism, power distance, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance, long-term orientation, and indulgence.FindingsThe results show that all the selected cultural behavioral predictors are significant in impacting COVID-19 infection rates. Furthermore, the model outperforms the conventional GHS Index model based on a means squared error comparison.Research limitations/implicationsThe authors hope that this study would continue promoting the use of cultures and behaviors in modeling the spread of health diseases.Practical implicationsThe authors hope that their works could prove beneficial to public office holders, as well as health experts working in health facilities, in better predicting potential outcomes during a health pandemic, thus allowing them to plan and allocate resources efficiently.Originality/valueThe results are a testament to the fact that sociocultural behavioral traits are more reliant predictors in modeling cross-national infection rates of global health pandemics, like that of COVID-19, as compared to economic-centric indicators.