Medical Student Knowledge of Neglected Tropical Diseases in Peru: A Cross-Sectional Study

Renato A Errea, George Vasquez-Rios, Jorge D Machicado, Maria Susana Gallardo, Marilhia Cornejo, Jorge F Urquiaga, Diego Montoya, Rodrigo Zamudio, Angelica Terashima, Luis A Marcos and Frine Samalvides

PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases, 2015, vol. 9, issue 11, 1-7

Abstract: In developing countries, education to health-care professionals is a cornerstone in the battle against neglected tropical diseases (NTD). Studies evaluating the level of knowledge of medical students in clinical and socio-demographic aspects of NTD are lacking. Therefore, a cross-sectional study was conducted among students from a 7 year-curriculum medical school in Peru to assess their knowledge of NTD by using a pilot survey comprised by two blocks of 10 short questions. Block I consisted of socio-demographic and epidemiological questions whereas block II included clinical vignettes. Each correct answer had the value of 1 point. Out of 597 responders (response rate: 68.4%), 583 were considered to have valid surveys (male:female ratio: 1:1.01; mean age 21 years, SD ± 2.42). Total knowledge showed a raising trend through the 7-year curriculum. Clinical knowledge seemed to improve towards the end of medical school whereas socio-demographic and epidemiological concepts only showed progress the first 4 years of medical school, remaining static for the rest of the curricular years (p = 0.66). Higher mean scores in socio-demographic and epidemiological knowledge compared to clinical knowledge were seen in the first two years (p

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article?id=10.1371/journal.pntd.0004197 (text/html)
https://journals.plos.org/plosntds/article/file?id ... 04197&type=printable (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pntd00:0004197

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pntd.0004197

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in PLOS Neglected Tropical Diseases from Public Library of Science
Bibliographic data for series maintained by plosntds ().