Background: Undergraduate medical students being the future treating doctors, knowledge about TB in them is of at most importance. Not only to correctly recognize, diagnose and treat TB patients but also to help them to take required precautions to protect themselves from getting infected with TB. Hence this study was conducted to know the knowledge, attitude and practice about the contagious disease- TB among the undergraduate medical students.
Material and methods: A cross-sectional, questionnaire based study conducted in department of Microbiology of Jawaharlal Nehru Medical College, KLES Dr. Prabhakar Kore Hospital and Medical Research Center, KAHER’s, Belagavi. A total of 134, 2nd year MBBS students took part in the study.All the students were given pretested, semi-structured questionnaire. All the data collected was entered in Microsoft Excel. Percentage was used to analyze the data.
Results: 95.6% of the students were aware that TB is a curable disease, and the knowledge about the free available of DOTS among 85% of them. 68% of them were aware that sputum microscopy is one of the main means to diagnose TB.
Conclusion: Along with the existing curriculum which includes topics on TB, there is a need for promoting integrated multidisciplinary study program mainly focusing on PBL(Problem Based Learning) and active learning strategies like seminars, CME/Conferences etc., which will further enhance students’ knowledge about TB and also helps to bring about positive behavior changes in them towards TB patients thus helping them in better diagnosis and treatment, in turn decreases TB incidence / burden as well helps in decreasing emergence of MDR-TB.
Impact Factor
2022: 6.012
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