Willingness of medical students to volunteer during the Covid-19 pandemic: Assessment at a tertiary care hospital in India

  1. MANRAJ SRA
  2. AMULYA GUPTA
  3. ABHISHEK JAISWAL
  4. KAPIL YADAV
  5. ANIL GOSWAMI
  6. KIRAN GOSWAMI

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Abstract

The involvement of medical students in strategies to control Covid-19 might be considered to cope with the shortage of healthcare workers. We assessed the knowledge about Covid-19, willingness to volunteer, potential areas of involvement and reasons for hesitation among medical students towards volunteering.

Methods

We did this cross-sectional study among undergraduate students at a tertiary care teaching hospital in New Delhi. We used a web-based questionnaire to elicit demographic information, knowledge of Covid-19, willingness to volunteer and reasons deterring them from working during the Covid-19 pandemic, and self-declared knowledge in six domains.

Results

A total of 292 students participated in the study with a mean (SD) age of 19.9 (3.1) years. The mean (SD) knowledge score of Covid-19 was 6.9 (1.1) (maximum score 10). Knowledge score was significantly different among preclinical (6.5), paraclinical (7.18) and clinical groups (7.03). Almost three-fourth (75.3%) participants were willing to volunteer in the Covid-19 pandemic, though 67.8% had not received any training in emergency medicine or public health crisis management. Willingness to work was maximum in areas of social work and indirect patient care (62.3% each). Lack of personal protective equipment was cited as a highly deterring factor for volunteering (62.7%) followed by fear of transmitting the infection to family members (45.9%), fear of causing harm to the patient (34.2%) and the absence of available treatment (22.2%).

Conclusions

A majority of the students were willing to volunteer even though they had not received adequate training. Students may serve as an auxiliary force during the pandemic, especially in non-clinical settings.

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  1. Version published to 10.25259/nmji_104_21
  2. ScreenIT

    SciScore for 10.1101/2021.01.22.21250302: (What is this?)

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

    Table 1: Rigor

    Institutional Review Board StatementConsent: There was information on the purpose of the study and question on consent at the beginning of the questionnaire, and the questionnaire will show only if the student gave the consent.
    IRB: The study was approved by the Institute Ethics Committee (ID-IEC/267/17.04.2020).
    Randomizationnot detected.
    Blindingnot detected.
    Power Analysisnot detected.
    Sex as a biological variablenot detected.

    Table 2: Resources

    Software and Algorithms
    SentencesResources
    Statistical analysis was performed using STATA version 13.1 (StataCorp LP, College Station, TX, USA).
    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:
    In understanding the implications of this study, a few limitations must also be considered. Our study was a single-centre study, different institutes may have a varying emphasis on emergency medicine and public health crisis management. Moreover, filling all options in the reasons for deterrence section was not compulsory. Limitations in data analysis include dichotomizing the ordinal questions and depending on self-reported information could bias the results as well. Due to a lower response rate for the students in the clinical years, the findings might not be generalizable. However, it is known that the response rate is generally low in clinical healthcare workers [25] which does not change significantly with the mode of administration. [26] Despite the limitations, our study provides considerable insights about the knowledge, skills and attitudes of medical students in a public health crisis. The ethical and moral issues surrounding the involvement of medical students in such a pandemic require deeper probing. Our study helps in identifying the key areas where medical students would be most comfortable in being involved and their reasons for deterrence to volunteer. Ultimately, the findings highlight that medical students are an untapped resource that may serve as a valuable resource despite their limited skill set, and the critical role of disaster management programs in medical schools that will serve to translate the inclination of volunteering of students to actual ser...

    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

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  3. Version published to 10.1101/2021.01.22.21250302v1 on medRxiv