Level of Knowledge in the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Cross-Sectional Survey of Canadian Medical Students

  1. Kacper Niburski
  2. Rachel Vaughan
  3. Elitsa Papazova
  4. Keith J. Todd

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Abstract

Background

During health crises medical education is often derailed as was the case during the current COVID-19 pandemic. Medical trainees face the daunting task of having to gather, filter and synthesize new information about the evolving situation often without the standardized resources they are used to.

Methods

We surveyed Canadian medical students, in the hardest hit province of Quebec, on how they were acquiring knowledge as well as what they knew of the pandemic. Google Forms was used, with the survey being distributed to each medical school in Quebec (McGill, ULaval, Udem) both through email and through social media pages for each class year. Two analyses, Mann-Whitney and ANOVA tests, were performed for year of study and degree obtained.

Results

We received responses from 111 medical students from three universities, which represents 5% of the students invited to complete the survey. Students reported using mass media most frequently (83%) and also had a high rate of use of social media (to gather information about the pandemic. They rated these resources low in terms of their trustworthiness despite the high rates of use (average 2.91 and 2.03 of 5 respectively). Medical students also endorsed using more formal resources like public health information, scientific journals and faculty-provided information that they trusted more, however, they accessed these resources at lower rates. Of note, medical students had correct answered 60% of COVID-19 prevention strategies, 73% clinical correct answers, 90% epidemiological correct answers. Additionally, students who were training in the larger city of Montreal, where the worst of the outbreak was focused, tended to significantly perform better (p<0.0001) than their colleagues who were not located there.

Conclusion

These finding indicate a wide use of information resources intended for public consumption rather than more rigorous and trustworthy sources. Furthermore, there seems to be a knowledge gap amongst medical students responding to this survey that suggests an opportunity to improve the delivery of educational content during this rapidly evolving pandemic.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2020.10.07.20208801: (What is this?)

    Please note, not all rigor criteria are appropriate for all manuscripts.

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board Statementnot detected.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    All data was funneled into Excel (Microsoft, Richmond, Virginia).
    Excel
    suggested: None
    STATA (StataCorp, Release V.15.1, College Station, Texas, USA) was used for all statistical analyses.
    STATA
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)
    StataCorp
    suggested: (Stata, RRID:SCR_012763)

    Results from OddPub: We did not detect open data. We also did not detect open code. Researchers are encouraged to share open data when possible (see Nature blog).

    Results from LimitationRecognizer: We detected the following sentences addressing limitations in the study:
    There are certainly limitations to this study. The data is self-reported, and subject to recall bias by the students. It is also a relatively small number of students from three schools all in the province of Quebec. The generalizability of the results are unclear. Despite this, this survey does provide interesting insight into knowledge and knowledge acquisition by medical students during this unprecedented time. Additionally, though the lockdown measures were mandated by law to be the same provincially in Quebec, their local application may have differed (34). Such a difference, even small, may help explain the differences in Quebec City and Montreal students due to more exposure to the news or other sources by Montreal students compared to lower-prevalence students in other geographical locations.

    Results from TrialIdentifier: No clinical trial numbers were referenced.

    Results from Barzooka: We did not find any issues relating to the usage of bar graphs.

    Results from JetFighter: We did not find any issues relating to colormaps.

    Results from rtransparent:
    • Thank you for including a conflict of interest statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • Thank you for including a funding statement. Authors are encouraged to include this statement when submitting to a journal.
    • No protocol registration statement was detected.

    About SciScore

    SciScore is an automated tool that is designed to assist expert reviewers by finding and presenting formulaic information scattered throughout a paper in a standard, easy to digest format. SciScore checks for the presence and correctness of RRIDs (research resource identifiers), and for rigor criteria such as sex and investigator blinding. For details on the theoretical underpinning of rigor criteria and the tools shown here, including references cited, please follow this link.

  2. Version published to 10.1101/2020.10.07.20208801v1 on medRxiv