Evaluation of internet access and utilization by medical students in Lahore, Pakistan

BMC Medical Informatics and Decision Making

Research Article

Ali Raza¹  Rehan Yaqoob²  Mansoor Hussain³  Mohammad A Shahzad³  Nauman A Jadoon³  Muhammad F Zahid⁴  Hafiz Mansoorulhaq⁵  Bilal A Jadoon⁶  Sami Ullah⁷ 

[1] Center for Biomedical Research, Lahore, Pakistan;Postgraduate Medical Institute, Lahore, Pakistan;Department of Medicine, Nishtar Medical College Hospital, Multan, Pakistan;Department of Medicine, Nishtar Medical College Hospital, Multan, Pakistan;Center for Biomedical Research, Lahore, Pakistan;Department of Surgery, Fatima Memorial College of Medicine and Dentistry, Lahore, Pakistan;Department of Surgery, Sharif Medical and Dental College, Lahore, Pakistan;Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan;Services Institute of Medical Sciences, Lahore, Pakistan;

关键词: Medical Student;    Health Care Professional;    Internet Access;    Online Database;    Full Text Article;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6947-11-37

 received in 2010-10-22, accepted in 2011-05-30,  发布年份 2011

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundThe internet is increasingly being used worldwide in imparting medical education and improving its delivery. It has become an important tool for healthcare professionals training but the data on its use by medical students in developing countries is lacking with no study on the subject from Pakistan. This study was, therefore, carried out with an aim to evaluate the pattern of internet access and utilization by medical students in Pakistan.MethodsA structured pre-tested questionnaire was administered to a group of 750 medical students in clinical years studying at various public and private medical colleges in Lahore. The questions were related to patterns of internet access, purpose of use and self reported confidence in performing various internet related tasks, use of health related websites to supplement learning and the problems faced by students in using internet at the institution.ResultsA total of 532 medical students (70.9%) returned the questionnaire. The mean age of study participants was 21.04 years (SD 1.96 years). Majority of the respondents (84.0%) reported experience with internet use. About half of the students (42.1%) were using internet occasionally with 23.1%, 20.9% and 13.9% doing so frequently, regularly and rarely respectively. About two third of the students (61.0%) stated that they use internet for both academic and professional activities. Most of the participants preferred to use internet at home (70.5%). Self reported ability to search for required article from PubMed and PakMedinet was reported by only 34.0% of the entire sample. Students were moderately confident in performing various internet related tasks including downloading medical books from internet, searching internet for classification of diseases and downloading full text article. Health related websites were being accessed by 55.1% students to supplement their learning process. Lack of time, inadequate number of available computers and lack of support from staff were cited as the most common problems faced by students while accessing internet in the institution premises. There were significant differences among male and female students with respect to the place of internet use (p = 0.001) and the ability to search online databases for required articles (p = 0.014).ConclusionsMajority of the medical students in this study had access to internet and were using it for both academic and personal reasons. Nevertheless, it was seen that there is under utilization of the potential of internet resources to augment learning. Increase in awareness, availability of requisite facilities and training in computing skills are required to enable better utilization of digital resources of digital resources by medical students.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Jadoon et al; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2011