Knowledge, attitudes, and practices towards research in pre-graduate students of Peruvian Schools of Medicine

Abstract

Introduction: Scientific research during basic courses in medical schools is facing a crisis, not only because of the low number of research projects, but also for the lack of quality in research proposals. Doing research is the basis for becoming a good physician, and it must be taken not only as a mandatory tool for obtaining more knowledge, but it also should be recognized that research is a very valuable tool in the formation of physicians with high academic level.
Objective: To determine knowledge, attitudes and practices towards doing research in pre-graduate students from Peruvian medical schools. Material and Methods: This investigation was carried out in medical students. 1484 questionnaires from 13 medical schools were analyzed. Data was collected in two phases: administering the questionnaire to students and collecting data from each medical school.
Results: The best attitudes were as follows; "It it not necessary to be a highly gifted person in order to become engaged in research" (83.3%), "I think of getting involved in research in the future" (80.4%).
Implementation Practices: The academic credit-research rate was above less than 10% of the current workload, 62% of the universities require carrying out research (thesis) as the only way for acquiring a medical degree. Limitation practices: research is self-financed in 84.4% of all projects, 28.5% of all medical schools state that thesis must be published; however, only 16.3% are published. Finally, there was a good attitude in 71.9% (p<0.05) and acceptable knowledge in 53.7% (p<0.05).
Conclusion: With respect to attitudes towards research in pre-graduate students in medicine schools in Peru, they state that it is not necessary to be highly-gifted persons for doing research, and they also point out their will to be able to participate in research projects. Also, there is an association between belonging to a research group and their academic or knowledge level and their positive attitude towards research.