MEDICAL STUDENTS’ PREFERENCES TOWARDS LEARNING RESOURCES AND THEIR STUDY HABITS, AT A PUBLIC SECTOR MEDICAL COLLEGE OF PUNJAB, PAKISTAN
Keywords:
Medical students, Learning preferences, Learning resources, Study habitsAbstract
Background: Medical education has been evolving all the time and so are the learning resources the medical students use. So, it’s important to discern them to efficiently incorporate them. Objective was to learn about the preferences of medical students regarding various learning resources. Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted from August to September, 2024 at a public sector medical college of Punjab, Pakistan. After taking approval from the institutional ethical review board and taking informed consent from the study participants, data collection was done using a validated questionnaire. Convenient sampling technique was used for data collection. Data was then analyzed using IBM SPSS version 27. Results: Out of the total 173 participants, 90 (51.7%) were from pre-clinical years and 83 (47.7%) were from clinical years. Eighty-eight (50.6%) were females and 85 (48.9%) were males. Most of the students reported using textbooks but males were more inclined towards textbooks comparatively (p=0.011). Other sources consulted by medical students include medical websites online textbooks, research journals, pocketbooks and lecture handouts. Lack of time for reading textbooks because of other commitments was the major reason given by the students for not always/frequently consulting textbooks (p value=0.048). Majority of the students spend their free time in watching television/using internet while least number was of the students who play indoor games in free time.
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