COVID-19 Readiness and Career Aspirations of South Indian Medical Students: A Cross-Sectional Survey Study

PURPOSE: The second wave of COVID-19 devastated the medical sector on India and the government has implored medical students to aid the frontline workforce. This study aims to assess the knowledge, attitude and practice (KAP) of South Indian Medical students regarding the COVID-19 pandemic and their career aspirations. PATIENTS AND METHODS: This is an online questionnaire based, cross-sectional study featuring a pre-validated questionnaire with a KAP section and a career aspiration survey section, which was distributed to South Indian medical schools between November and December 2020. Three hundred and four responses were included for analysis. RESULTS: Good knowledge levels were seen in 65.5% of participants, 51% had good attitude scores and 80.6% had good practice scores. The mean KAP score was 14.81 ± 1.77. 1.3% of the respondents had low level KAP scores, 57.2% had moderate level KAP scores and 41.4% of them had good level KAP scores. Majority aspired to continue post graduate medical training in Clinical medicine in India (n = 116, 38.2%), followed by Clinical Medicine outside India (n = 80, 26.3%). Students who chose “Research Work” (average rank [AR] = 192.70), “Clinical Medicine outside India” (AR =173.64) “Undecided” (AR = 148.59) and “Clinical Medicine in India” (AR = 146.63) as career aspiration featured better KAP scores compared to those students who preferred non-clinical specialties (AR = 96.73) and or a career change (AR =76.69) (p = 0.001). CONCLUSION: The KAP questionnaire revealed inadequate readiness amongst the majority of student participants. Targeted, structured educational interventions may be recommended in order to rapidly rectify the situation and deploy medical students to supplement the frontline workers in the COVID pandemic.