1Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Deralakatte, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
2Associate Professor, Department of Physiology, Sreenivasa Institute of Medical Sciences, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
3Assistant Professor, Department of Microbiology, Maleka Manipal Medical College, Manipal, Karnataka, India
4Associate Professor, Department of Forensic Medicine and Toxicology, Kasturba Medical College, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
5Lecturer in Biostatistics, Department of Community Medicine, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Deralakatte, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
6Professor, Department of Physiology, Yenepoya Medical College, Yenepoya University, Deralakatte, Mangalore, Karnataka, India
*Corresponding author email id: drdutt23@yahoo.com
Online published on 16 December, 2014.
To become a doctor is the ambition of many students. To treat patients and put them on the road to recovery gives an immense delight, something one will not get from many of the professions. Each year, students get admitted to medical colleges with definitive objectives, attitudes and pre-existing knowledge. Students with humanitarian touch, service-oriented minds aiming towards global health-care should take this profession. Awareness about this profession would certainly help to remove their misconceptions and achieve their aims. In order to ascertain this preexisting knowledge regarding medical training, to study their attitudes and difference in knowledge if any, based on gender and nationality among newly joined students, the present study was carried out.
We included ninety students who had just joined for their first year course of a private University Medical College in Karnataka state, India. Content, construct validity and test–retest reliability were applied to a questionnaire that was developed by the investigators. Responses were compiled and statistically analysed.
The results revealed that motivation for selecting this profession seems to be social service (75.3%) and for financial gains (19.1%). Males (61.8%) and females (83.6%) had this opinion. High percentages of the entire study group were unaware of the intricacies of learning medicine.
Humanitarian service as the reason behind opting for medical course is declining and rather financial motivation is increasing. The students were unaware of the training process and they need to develop qualities like social commitment, professional courtesy and compassion.
Medical student, Curriculum, Training programme, Motivation, Attitudes, Knowledge, Learning
