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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-...

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Autores principales: Koh, Tricia Jia Wen, Ling, Abel Ho Zhi, Chiang, Christine Li Ling, Lee, Gabriel Sheng Jie, Tay, Hannah Si En, Yi, Huso
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: BioMed Central 2021
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.
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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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