Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice and Barriers Related to the Involvement of Medical and Nursing Students in Medical Research

Background: Adequate knowledge and a positive attitude toward research are essential components of medical education, however, undergraduate involvement in research has been on the decline due to time constraints, heavy curriculum, and poor exposure to research methodology. This study aims to evaluate this.

Methodology: A total of 70 students from All Saints University Dominica participated; 72.9% (n=51) were females while 27.1% (n=19) were males. It was also observed that 37.7% (n=26) of the study population had already commenced clinical rotations with 20.0% (n=14) being in the basic science (MD) class, 8.6% (n=06) from the nursing department and only 2.9% (n=02) of the residents were from the Pre-Med class. This study involved the use of a self-designed, structured questionnaire that was electronically distributed to students. The data analysis was done using SPSS version 23.0.

Results: It was revealed that 67.1% (n=47) of the study population demonstrated good knowledge of research, with 92.9% having a positive attitude pattern toward research. 71.4% believe that research will help them in understanding subjects better; 64.3% believe that research will help their clinical practice later while 34.8% believe that it is an extra burden to do research and 30.0% share the belief that research is time-consuming and disturbs/distracts from studies. Few of the findings include a positive association between gender and previous research participation (p=0.019), gender and lack of motivation from fellow students (p=0.021), gender and lack of proper mentorship/guidance by faculty (p=0.019), gender and difficulty obtaining approval from research committee (p=0.036).

Conclusion: The study shows that the student’s knowledge of research was only above average and students’ positive attitudes do not translate into actual knowledge and practice of medical research. Barriers to research included lack of time, lack of access to resources, and lack of mentoring and motivation by faculty. Medical students could benefit from proper integration of research into curricular and extracurricular activities with proper mentoring from faculty.