Awareness among Medical and Non-Medical Students About the Practice of Periodic Medical Examination

Abstract

Objective: To compare the Awareness among Medical and non-medical students about the practice of Periodic Medical examination. Study Design: Cross sectional descriptive study. Place and Duration of Study: The study was conducted between 1 February 2016 to 30 April 2016 among the students enrolled in universities and colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad. Materials and Methods: It was a cross-sectional comparative study. Data was collected through structured, pre-validated questionnaire. Eight colleges of Rawalpindi and Islamabad were selected, four were related to medical profession and four were non-medical. On the basis of simple random sampling, 271 students enrolled in bachelor program were selected among these institutes. The data was analyzed through SPSS version 20. Results: Overall 63 % of the students, both from medical and non-medical institutions, had awareness about the knowledge and practice of periodic medical examination. Among medical students 68% and 61% among non- medical students had knowledge about periodic medical examination. No major difference was found in knowledge and practice among medical versus non-medical students. Conclusion: This study concludes that Medical and non-medical students are aware about the importance of periodic medical examination with trivial difference and lack of practice and reasons of not following the medical advice are busy schedules and heavy costs of investigations. From public health perspective there is a great need to raise health awareness amongst those who do not have awareness about periodic medical examination to prevent our future generation from chronic illnesses.