The Awareness Survey of Clinical Trials Among Medical Students of South Rajasthan, India
Abstract
Background / Aim: Clinical trials are becoming more popular in India, but its awareness among the medical professionals remains far from satisfactory. Clinical research/trial can help medical students in developing the critical thinking abilities necessary for medical practice. In this era of evidence-based medicine, the integration of medical education and clinical research is crucial to ensure that scientific findings are translated into clinical practice. The present study aimed to find out the awareness about clinical trial among undergraduates.
Methods: After obtaining approval from the Institutional Ethics Committee, this cross-sectional study was conducted on students from first to final year and interns after taking their consent. A sample of 390 respondents was analysed. A structured questionnaire was used to measure the objective of this study. The
proportion of successfully answered questions in each group was computed and the results were sorted into pre-determined grades as follows: As excellent - 80-100 %, moderate - 50-80 % and terrible – less than 50 %.
Results: Out of 390 undergraduate students, for the statement regarding the concept of clinical trials, around 28.2 % fell in the good category, 57.7 % in the average category and 14.1 % in the poor category. Regarding the statement about role of the United States Food and Drug Administration (US FDA) in approving new drug, 34.1 % were poor responders, 52.6 % were average and 13.3 % were good. The statements regarding the participation in the clinical research study showed that majority were in the poor and average response category (45.6 % and 41.5 %, respectively) as compared to only 12.8 % in the good category.
Conclusions: The overall awareness of clinical trials was low among students, the medical undergraduates are future innovators, clinicians and scientific explorers. It would be better if they are trained at earlier days of learning about clinical trials/research and medical ethics. These can be made a part of medical curriculum so that they can build their concrete future.
References
Ohmann C, Deimling A. Attitude towards clinical trials: results of a survey of persons interested in research. Inflamm Res 2004 Aug;53 Suppl 2:S142-7.
Gupta YK, Padhy BM. India's growing participation in global clinical trials. Trends Pharmacol Sci 2011 Jun;32(6):327-9.
Vittalrao AM, Kumari KS, Gill R, Thomson SR. A questionnaire survey on awareness of clinical trials among medical students. Biomed & Pharmacol J 2018;11(4):2005-9.
Sharma KH, Jindal A. Low awareness of clinical research in India amongst fi nal year medical students and physicians: Need for increased emphasis on clinical research in medical curriculum. Arch Med Health Sci 2014;2:234-7.
Abushouk AI, Hatata AN, Omran IM, Youniss MM, Elmansy KF, Meawad, AG. Attitudes and perceived barriers among medical students towards clinical research: A cross-sectional study in an Egyptian medical school. J Biomed Res 2016;(7): 5490575. doi: 10.1155/2016/5490575.
Sabzwari S, Kauser S, Khuwaja AK. Experiences, attitudes and barriers towards research amongst junior faculty of Pakistani medical universities. BMC Med Educ 2009 Nov 16;9:68. doi: 10.1186/1472-6920-9-68.
Ito-Ihara T, Hong JH, Kim OJ, Sumi E, Kim SY, Tanaka S, et al. An international survey of physicians regarding clinical trials: a comparison between Kyoto University Hospital and Seoul National University Hospital. BMC Med Res Methodol 2013 Oct 25;13:130. doi: 10.1186/1471-2288-13-130.
Cursiefen C, Altunbas A. Contribution of medical student research to the Medline-indexed publications of a German medical faculty. Med Educ 1998 Jul;32(4):439-40.
Kolcić I, Polasek O, Mihalj H, Gombac E, Kraljević V, Kraljević I, et al. Research involvement, specialty choice, and emigration preferences of final year medical students in croatia. Croat Med J 2005 Feb;46(1):88-95.
Goel D, Walia R, Sharma P, Kaur H, Agnihotri P. Impact of educational intervention on knowledge, attitude and awareness of good clinical practice among health care providers. Perspect Clin Res 2017 Apr-Jun;8(2):90-4.
Powell JH, Fleming Y, Walker-McGill CL, Lenoir M. The project IMPACT experience to date: increasing minority participation and awareness of clinical trials. J Natl Med Assoc 2008 Feb;100(2):178-87.
Chatterjee B, Sarkar J. Awareness of medical ethics among undergraduates in a West Bengal medical college. Indian J Med Ethics 2012 Apr-Jun;9(2):93-100.
Meenakumari K, Amberkar MB, Rajakannan T, Rao E, Mohan L, Prashanth, Mahima. Awareness of clinical trials among university pharmacy students - a questionnaire survey. JCDR 2010 Oct;(4):3064-74.
Thatte UM, Bavdekar SB. Clinical research in India: great expectations? J Postgrad Med 2008 Oct-Dec;54(4):318-23.
Deo MG. Undergraduate medical students' research in India. J Postgrad Med 2008 Jul-Sep;54(3):176-9.
Kiruthika S, Vijayalakshmi S, Geetha, K, Parameswari R. A study to assess the knowledge of medical students on clinical trials in Madurai medical college. IJSR 2016;5(7):892-4.
- Authors retain copyright and grant the journal right of first publication with the work simultaneously licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution License that allows others to share the work with an acknowledgement of the work's authorship and initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are able to enter into separate, additional contractual arrangements for the non-exclusive distribution of the journal's published version of the work (e.g., post it to an institutional repository or publish it in a book), with an acknowledgement of its initial publication in this journal.
- Authors are permitted and encouraged to post their work online (e.g., in institutional repositories or on their website) prior to and during the submission process, as it can lead to productive exchanges, as well as earlier and greater citation of published work (See The Effect of Open Access).