Awareness of medical students about research; current practices and future

Abstract

The struggle towards evidence based medicine can only be achieved if all the healthcare workers are ready to contribute for research and for best practices. One of the most critical components of learning is the seeking of knowledge through research. There is a need of hour that our youngsters into medical fields participate enthusiastically towards research in order to collect a data of their own population so that their specific health problems could be addressed appropriately. There is general perception that research culture in undergraduate MBBS students is lacking. This study focused on to study the awareness of our young undergraduate medical students towards research. A total of 206 medical students were enrolled of which questionnaire of 200 were found within inclusion criteria. Results: overall less than 40% of the students are aware of basics of the research and less than 5% have participated in research related activity. Majority of the students are motivated for doing research. More than 50% students think that lack of training, lack of guidance by faculty, lack of institutional support and lack of funding are important barriers in doing research