Perception Towards Community Medicine as A Subject and Career Option Among Medical Students in A Medical College, Indore, Madhya Pradesh
Keywords:
Community Medicine, Perception, CareerAbstract
Introduction: Community Medicine is meant to equip the students with the knowledge and skills order to identify the prevalent health problems in the community and find methods of alleviating them.
Objective: To assess the general perception of students towards community medicine and analyze if students prefer community medicine for a career.
Methodology: This was a cross sectional study, carried out in a Medical college of Indore City, from Jan - May 2016. A predesigned, pretested, semi structured questionnaire was used.
Results: 101 students participated in the study, with 42 (41.58%) males and 59(58.42%) females. 82 (81.19%) understand the concept of community medicine and 90(89.12%) had realized its relevance. About 74(73.27%) said that they would not prefer community medicine as a career with reasons cited as low pay scale (p value <0.0001), less prestige (p value 0.000045) and status (p value 0.023), lack of fame (p value 0.0246) and career satisfaction (p value <0.0001).
Conclusion: Students seem to understand the subject and don’t have an issue with the topics, or its projection, however there is reluctance to choose it as a career.
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