Undergraduate student interest in healthcare career in the context of COVID-19 pandemic

  1. Stephanie Y Jo
  2. Jingxin Li
  3. Ananya Dewan
  4. Yu-Chia Cheng
  5. Haoxiang Hou
  6. Ronnie A. Sebro

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Abstract

Objectives

The healthcare profession has been long considered an excellent career choice. Pre-medical experience is documented to be important in shaping future medical landscape. In the wake of the pandemic, there has been intense media spotlight on the healthcare profession and change in academic environment, necessitating analyses of student experience. This project aims to assess change in undergraduate student interest in healthcare career using cross-sectional survey study.

Methods

The project was approved by our Institutional Review Board. Voluntary survey collected data on demographics, socioeconomics, media exposure, academic environment, and change in interest in a healthcare profession. Survey was distributed through the university undergraduate pre-health listserv. Total of 297 responses were obtained. Descriptive statistics including Fisher’s exact test were applied in the analysis.

Results

Majority of the respondents were Asians (54.9%), second generation immigrants (52.2%), and female (73.4%). Large proportion of the respondents were negatively affected by the pandemic, with losing a job or internship personally (42.1%) or a family member or a friend (62.6%). Students had mixed response to online learning environment, with 27.3% of students noting no change, 40.4% students noting increased difficulty, and 32.3% students noting decreased difficulty of classes. During the pandemic, 47.5% of students noted increased interest in pursuing healthcare career. The change in interest in healthcare career was not associated with xdemographics, economic hardship, or online learning environment.

Discussion

Despite the challenges of COVID-19 pandemic, students showed strong interest in pursuing healthcare careers.

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  1. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.04.11.438530: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementIRB: Study was approved by the institutional review board.
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.
    Cell Line AuthenticationAuthentication: The survey questions were designed by authors and consisted of demographic and socioeconomic information, interest in healthcare career, academic environment, and time spent watching, listening, or reading news (media exposure).

    Table 2: Resources

    No key resources detected.

    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:
    Main limitations of our study are that it is restricted to a single institution, and the racial/ ethnic distribution and immigration status were heavily skewed and not reflective of the general population. Further studies including additional institutions will be helpful to better gauge the demographics of undergraduate students pursuing healthcare careers. Another limitation is that the email link was sent to pre-health listserv, which is a biased student cohort with already high interest in healthcare career. Those who were not interested in healthcare career previously and now plan to pursue healthcare will not be captured by the survey. Also, among the students that opened the email with the survey link, approximately half did not respond. While it is limitation of all survey-based study, the students who were willing to participate in the survey may be different from those who did not respond. On the other hand, among those who were already interested, there was persistent interest despite the pandemic. There has been large increase in application to medical school in 2020, which has been compared to “time after 9/11, when we saw an increase in those motivated to serve this country militarily” (15) It is great to see the desire to serve the community by our students, and this corresponds to our finding of increased interest in healthcare career. The media spotlight of the pandemic may emphasize the value of the healthcare professional and may spark a trend of increased i...

    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.
    • No funding statement was detected.
    • 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 10.1101/2021.04.11.438530v1 on bioRxiv