Examining Medical Student Volunteering During The COVID-19 Pandemic As A Prosocial Behavior During An Emergency

Abstract

Introduction

COVID-19 has caused major disruptions to healthcare, with voluntary opportunities offered to medical students to provide clinical support. We used the conceptual framework of prosocial behavior during an emergency – behaviors whose primary focus is benefiting others – to examine volunteering during COVID-19.

Methods

We conducted an in-depth, mixed-methods cross-sectional survey, from 2 ^nd May to 15 ^th June 2020, of medical students studying at UK medical schools. Data analysis was informed by Latane and Darley’s theory of prosocial behavior during an emergency and aimed to understand students’ decision-making processes.

Results

A total of 1145 medical students from 36 medical schools completed the survey. While 947 (82.7%) of students were willing to volunteer, only 391 (34.3%) had volunteered. The majority (92.7%) of students understood that they may be asked to volunteer; however, we found that deciding one’s responsibility to volunteer was mitigated by a complex interaction between the interests of others and self-interest. Further, concerns revolving around professional role boundaries influenced students’ decisions over whether they had the required skills and knowledge to volunteer. Deciding to volunteer depended not only on possession of necessary skills, but also seniority and identification with the nature of volunteering roles offered.

Conclusions

We propose two additional domains to Latane and Darley’s theory of prosocial behavior during an emergency that students consider before making their final decision to volunteer. These are ‘logistics’ – whether it is logistically feasible to volunteer – and ‘safety’ – whether it is safe to volunteer. This study highlights a number of modifiable barriers to prosocial behavior that medical students encounter and provides suggestions regarding how Latane and Darley’s theory of prosocial behavior can be operationalized within educational strategies to address these barriers. Optimizing the process of volunteering can aid healthcare provision and may facilitate a safer volunteering process for all.

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SciScore for 10.1101/2021.07.06.21260058: (What is this?)

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

Table 1: Rigor

Ethics	IRB: Ethics: Ethical approval for the study was obtained from the University of Cambridge Psychology Research Ethics Committee (PRE.2020.040).
Sex as a biological variable	not detected.
Randomization	not detected.
Blinding	not detected.
Power Analysis	not detected.

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: An explicit section about the limitations of the techniques employed in this study was not found. We encourage authors to address study limitations.

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.

Results from scite Reference Check: We found no unreliable references.

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