Abstract
Introduction: Equipping young medical trainees with fundamental research skills can be a promising strategy to address the need for professionals who can understand and responsibly communicate evolving scientific evidence during a pandemic. Despite an ardent interest to partake in research, most educational institutions in Pakistan and other low-middle income countries have not yet adopted a comprehensive strategy for research skills education. The authors aimed to design and assess the feasibility of implementing the first nation-wide virtual research workshop for medical students in Pakistan.Methods: The course “Beginners Guide to Research,” designed as a nation-wide virtual research workshop series, was conducted for medical students across Pakistan in June 2020. Four interactive live workshops took place online on alternate days from June 22nd, 2020, to June 27th, 2020, each lasting 1–2 h. Outcomes included: (i) reach, (ii) efficacy as indexed by pre-post change in score pertaining to knowledge and application of research and (iii) self-rated perceptions about understanding of research on a Likert scale.Results: 3,862 participants enrolled from 41 cities and 123 institutions. Enrolled participants belonged to the following provinces: Sindh (n = 1,852, 48.0%), Punjab (n = 1,767, 45.8%), Khyber Pakhtunkhwa (n = 109, 2.8%), Azad Jammu and Kashmir (n = 84, 2.2%) Balochistan (n = 42, 1.1%). We also saw a few registrations from international students (n = 8, 0.2%). Mean (SD) age of enrolled medical students was 21.1 (2.1) years, 2,453 (63.5%) participants were female and 2,394 (62.0%) were from private-sector medical colleges. Two thousand ninety-three participants participants filled out all four pre-test and post-test forms. The total median knowledge score improved from 39.7 to 60.3% with the highest improvements in concepts of research bioethics and literature search (p < 0.001) with greater change for females compared to males (+20.6 vs. +16.2%, p < 0.001) and private institutions compared to public ones (+16.2 vs. +22.1%, p < 0.001).Conclusion: The overwhelming enrollment and significant improvement in learning outcomes (>50% of baseline) indicate feasibility of a medical student-led research course during a pandemic, highlighting its role in catering to the research needs in the LMICs.
Highlights
Equipping young medical trainees with fundamental research skills can be a promising strategy to address the need for professionals who can understand and responsibly communicate evolving scientific evidence during a pandemic
To address this challenge and reverse this trend, it is necessary to develop and encourage a research potential early on in budding physician-scientists. This is of pronounced importance in settings like Pakistan, which are plagued with a lack of adequate public health training institutions, lower rates of literacy in the general population and an overall mistrust in the profession of medicine
A cross sectional study conducted in Pakistan showed that a majority of the medical students from either public or private sector universities were keenly interested in medical research and 91% expressed an interest toward having medical research a part of basic medical education [9]
Summary
While evidence is lacking for a low-middle income country such as Pakistan, there are only a handful of physician-scientists in the country, which can be attributed to an lack of skills, knowledge, mentorship, and funding support leading to poor understanding of research causing misinformation [5, 6]. To address this challenge and reverse this trend, it is necessary to develop and encourage a research potential early on in budding physician-scientists. This deficit will only widen the divide and disparity in science and medicine
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