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Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study
BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed challenges that medical students face when healthcare systems are under intense pressure. There is a need to assess medical students’ education needs in pandemic preparedness. The objective of this mixed-methods study was threefold: (1) to assess COVID-...
Autores principales: | , , , , , |
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Formato: | Online Artículo Texto |
Lenguaje: | English |
Publicado: |
BioMed Central
2021
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Materias: | |
Acceso en línea: | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8176668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02762-0 |
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author | Koh, Tricia Jia Wen Ling, Abel Ho Zhi Chiang, Christine Li Ling Lee, Gabriel Sheng Jie Tay, Hannah Si En Yi, Huso |
author_facet | Koh, Tricia Jia Wen Ling, Abel Ho Zhi Chiang, Christine Li Ling Lee, Gabriel Sheng Jie Tay, Hannah Si En Yi, Huso |
author_sort | Koh, Tricia Jia Wen |
collection | PubMed |
description | BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed challenges that medical students face when healthcare systems are under intense pressure. There is a need to assess medical students’ education needs in pandemic preparedness. The objective of this mixed-methods study was threefold: (1) to assess COVID-19 perceived efficacy, susceptibility, and anxiety in relation to health literacy; (2) to describe attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures against COVID-19 and willingness to work during an outbreak; and (3) to examine multilevel factors associated with willingness to work. METHODS: An online survey was conducted among 263 medical students in Singapore during the lockdown period in July 2020. Participants were surveyed on COVID-19 related literacy, perceptions, anxiety, attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures, and willingness to work during an outbreak. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the factors associated with the key outcome variable of willingness to work. In addition, open-ended questions were used to assess medical education needs, which were reported using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Perceived adequacy of COVID-19 information was associated with higher perceived efficacy, lower perceived susceptibility, and lower anxiety levels among the students. Medical students were mostly supportive of COVID-19 precautionary measures except for relatively intrusive measures like in-home surveillance. The degree of willingness to work during an outbreak varied based on certain conditions, in particular family’s health and safety, and was associated with self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility, and hospital capacity of outbreak management. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students’ attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures varied depending on legality, financial and psychological support, and privacy concerns. Health literacy played an important role in increasing the efficacy of protection against COVID-19 and reducing pandemic-related anxiety among medical students. Their willingness to work during an outbreak was increased by an effective policy of precautionary measures, hospital capacity to manage a pandemic, and assurance of family safety. Medical education should include pandemic preparedness to better prepare students to aid in pandemics, with emphasis on public health policy and ethics coupled with clinical training targeted to managing outbreaks. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-021-02762-0. |
format | Online Article Text |
id | pubmed-8176668 |
institution | National Center for Biotechnology Information |
language | English |
publishDate | 2021 |
publisher | BioMed Central |
record_format | MEDLINE/PubMed |
spelling | pubmed-81766682021-06-04 Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study Koh, Tricia Jia Wen Ling, Abel Ho Zhi Chiang, Christine Li Ling Lee, Gabriel Sheng Jie Tay, Hannah Si En Yi, Huso BMC Med Educ Research BACKGROUND: The COVID-19 pandemic has revealed challenges that medical students face when healthcare systems are under intense pressure. There is a need to assess medical students’ education needs in pandemic preparedness. The objective of this mixed-methods study was threefold: (1) to assess COVID-19 perceived efficacy, susceptibility, and anxiety in relation to health literacy; (2) to describe attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures against COVID-19 and willingness to work during an outbreak; and (3) to examine multilevel factors associated with willingness to work. METHODS: An online survey was conducted among 263 medical students in Singapore during the lockdown period in July 2020. Participants were surveyed on COVID-19 related literacy, perceptions, anxiety, attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures, and willingness to work during an outbreak. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were used to determine the factors associated with the key outcome variable of willingness to work. In addition, open-ended questions were used to assess medical education needs, which were reported using thematic analysis. RESULTS: Perceived adequacy of COVID-19 information was associated with higher perceived efficacy, lower perceived susceptibility, and lower anxiety levels among the students. Medical students were mostly supportive of COVID-19 precautionary measures except for relatively intrusive measures like in-home surveillance. The degree of willingness to work during an outbreak varied based on certain conditions, in particular family’s health and safety, and was associated with self-efficacy, perceived susceptibility, and hospital capacity of outbreak management. CONCLUSIONS: Medical students’ attitudes towards a policy of precautionary measures varied depending on legality, financial and psychological support, and privacy concerns. Health literacy played an important role in increasing the efficacy of protection against COVID-19 and reducing pandemic-related anxiety among medical students. Their willingness to work during an outbreak was increased by an effective policy of precautionary measures, hospital capacity to manage a pandemic, and assurance of family safety. Medical education should include pandemic preparedness to better prepare students to aid in pandemics, with emphasis on public health policy and ethics coupled with clinical training targeted to managing outbreaks. SUPPLEMENTARY INFORMATION: The online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1186/s12909-021-02762-0. BioMed Central 2021-06-04 /pmc/articles/PMC8176668/ /pubmed/34088316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02762-0 Text en © The Author(s) 2021 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Open AccessThis article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) . The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) ) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data. |
spellingShingle | Research Koh, Tricia Jia Wen Ling, Abel Ho Zhi Chiang, Christine Li Ling Lee, Gabriel Sheng Jie Tay, Hannah Si En Yi, Huso Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title | Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title_full | Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title_fullStr | Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title_full_unstemmed | Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title_short | Attitudes towards COVID-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in Singapore: a mixed-methods study |
title_sort | attitudes towards covid-19 precautionary measures and willingness to work during an outbreak among medical students in singapore: a mixed-methods study |
topic | Research |
url | https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC8176668/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/34088316 http://dx.doi.org/10.1186/s12909-021-02762-0 |
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