Undergraduate medical students in India are underprepared to be the young-taskforce against Covid-19 amid prevalent fears

Abstract

Background. The healthcare system in India faces an acute shortage of front-line doctors to fight the Covid-19. Thus, the recruitment of undergraduate medical students into the health care force is being considered by many state governments. A survey was conducted amongst undergraduate medical students to understand their knowledge, attitude, and preparedness towards the ongoing pandemic. Methods. An anonymized survey on a cloud-based website (Survey Monkey) comprising 33 questions was served to medical students. Results. Of 616 (24.6%) respondents among 2500 invitees across six medical schools in India, most (54.1%) were in the final year of their undergraduate training program. Knowledge regarding viral transmission, clinical features, laboratory diagnosis, and drugs being tried out in Covid-19 was adequate among most students. However, understanding of the incubation period 123 (20%) and time to symptoms 30 (4.8%) was less than satisfactory. Three-fourths (75%) were unaware of the treatment guidelines for Covid-19, and one-quarter (155, 25.1%) were unaware of the required precautions during management. Moreover, 179 (29.1%) were unaware that Covid-19 causes an asymptomatic or minor illness in young individuals. Nearly 70% were reluctant to attend clinics from fear of getting infected or passing on to others. Besides, 250 (40.6%) were not updated on Covid-19, and most (486, 78.9%) resorted to social media for information on Covid-19. Conclusion. Prevalent fears and inadequate understanding of Covid-19 suggest that undergraduate medical students are not prepared to be the front-line taskforce in the current pandemic.

Preparation of students and residents of human medicine in the first four months of the Covid-19 pandemic. Implications for a second wave.

“…To keep students and residents up to date, it is necessary to provide valid knowledge via channels they commonly use. With the vast majority of them being digital natives, most get their knowledge via online platforms and social media [59]. In addition to that, it was shown that focused training courses (held offline before, and online after lockdown) could significantly enhance the knowledge about Covid-19 [85] and that there was no difference in quality between instructor-led and video lesson based instruction on PPE [86].…”

“…General medical knowledge, about the disease, and the virus itself were covered in 12.2% (n=10) of articles. Healthcare workers, including residents and students, revealed an inhomogeneous knowledge about the pandemic, with most in the need of improvement [59][60][61][62] and a few in good preparation [63,64]. Questions for every clinical aspect in the context of Covid-19, reaching from basic uncertainties to cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) [56,65] and even autopsy [66], were raised.…”

“…Likewise, anesthesiologists published early on practical knowledge about the disease, also addressing their trainees [69]. Nevertheless, a major challenge in retrieving valid knowledge lied in the fact, that students and residents make use of social media as a source of information frequently [59], which holds a potential risk of misinformation.…”

“…We found various transferable solutions in actions, like UK training bodies providing guidance principles for all trainees on redeployment, training disruption and its consequences with a useful link collection [70] and journals compiling 'frequently asked questions' (FAQ) [45,87]. Yet, for a better dissemination and to counteract rumors, such articles should be prominently placed on social media [59]. For a possible deployment to the frontline, the British Medical Association (BMA) demanded comprehensive introduction and supervision for students [27,32,88].…”

Peer Review #1 of "Impact of COVID-19 outbreak on the mental health status of undergraduate medical students in a COVID-19 treating medical college: a prospective longitudinal study (v0.1)"

“…Unfortunately, only limited studies were done on the impact of epidemic/pandemic on the mental health of medical students. Studies on the impact of COVID-19 pandemic on medical students are limited to cross-sectional surveys assessing attitude, awareness, knowledge, precautionary measures, concerns, risk perceptions, impact on education and confidence, and fear of COVID-19 (Agarwal et al 2020;Ahmed et al 2020b;Choi et al 2020;Khasawneh et al 2020;Nguyen et al 2020;Taghrir et al 2020). Literature search showed only a single study about the psychological impact of COVID-19 on medical students, which cross-sectionally assessed their anxiety levels (Cao et al 2020).…”