ABSTRACT

Objective: To know the appreciation of the student on the work of the Peruvian scientific research universities medical undergraduate students of faculties of Medicine of the Peru, 2016-2017. Materials and Methods: It is a multicentric, observational, descriptive and transversal study. It featured the participation of 400 medical students belonging to 19 faculties of medicine officially recognized by the Peruvian Association of faculties of Medicine (ASPEFAM). Applied sampling was not probabilistic. A validated by a study earlier, auto-applicative, anonymous, voluntary survey was used, and which underwent a pilot test. The collection was virtual and the analysis was descriptive. Results: Only 7.8% concerned that its Faculty of medicine Yes supported research. Around 56% concerned do not feel sufficiently trained by their University to achieve the scientific publication in bio-medical journals. And most they did appreciate that their universities do not encourage the seed research, do not have scientific internships and there is support for students to execute or carry out their thesis. Conclusions: According to the perceptions of the students about the work of universities in undergraduate scientific-medical research, this was classified as "deficient" by the majority of the surveyed.
Keywords: Medical Research; Undergraduate Medical Education; Medical students; Peru. (Source: MeSH NLM).

RESUMEN

Objetivo: Conocer la apreciación estudiantil sobre la labor de las universidades peruanas en la investigación científico médica de pre-grado en estudiantes de Facultades de Medicina del Perú, 2016-2017. Materiales y Métodos: El estudio fue de tipo multicéntrico, observacional, descriptivo, transversal. Se contó con la participación de 400 estudiantes de Medicina pertenecientes a 19 facultades de medicina reconocidas oficialmente por la Asociación Peruana de Facultades de Medicina (ASPEFAM). El muestreo aplicado fue no probabilístico. Se utilizó una encuesta validada por un estudio anterior, auto-aplicativa, anónima, voluntaria, y que fue sometida a una prueba piloto. La recolección fue virtual y el análisis realizado fue de tipo descriptivo. Resultados: De la población encuestada, solo el 7,8% refirió que su facultad de medicina sí apoyaba a la investigación. Alrededor del 56% refirió no sentirse suficientemente capacitado por su Universidad para lograr la publicación científica en revistas bio-médicas. Y en su gran mayoría hicieron apreciar que en sus universidades no se fomentan los semilleros en investigación, no cuentan con pasantías científicas y no existe apoyo para que los estudiantes ejecuten o realicen sus tesis. Conclusiones: Según las apreciaciones de los estudiantes entorno al trabajo que vienen haciendo las universidades y/o Facultades de Medicina en la investigación científico-médica de pregrado, esta fue catalogada como “deficiente” por la mayoría de los encuestados.
Palabras Clave: Investigación Médica; Educación de Pregrado en Medicina; estudiantes de Medicina; Perú. (Fuente: DeCS BIREME).

INTRODUCTION

Scientific research can be defined as every human activity focused on obtaining new knowledge in order to solve gaps or problems in real life. This activity is inherent to human medicine, thus each student from medicine has to know about research, and therefore he or she needs to be educated ¹. It is wrong to think that undergraduate students cannot neither do research nor publish their articles in Peruvian and foreign scientific medical journals. Evidence for this are countless publications that many Peruvian and foreign^2-4 students have been accomplishing.

According to Scimago ranking in its SIR 2015 report, Peru has 72 university institutions, which all together obtained a scientific production of 4311 articles. Even best ranked Peruvian universities in terms of publications cannot be compared with the number of publications worldwide. Lowest ranked universities are in a worst situation that they even end up having no scientific production⁵. Therefore, according to the Peruvian University Law N° 30220 adopted on 2014, “One of the obligatory and key roles in Peruvian universities are scientific research, accomplished by professors, graduates and undergraduates”⁶, particularly in the field of Human Medicine, as a result, it was posed as an overall objective to acknowledge student appreciation concerning Peruvian universities labor in scientific and medical undergraduate research in students from Peruvian medical schools, 2016 – 2017.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Study type and design:
Multicenter, observational, descriptive and cross – sectional study, performed from November 2016 until January 2017. In addition, it was carried out a call for the participation of medicine students from 25 recognized universities by the Peruvian Association of Medical Schools (ASPEFAM).

Population and Sampling:
Population studied were every student from Peruvian Medical Schools recognized by ASPEFAM, 2016. Type of sampling was non-probabilistic by convenience.

It included all those medicine students that have taken, in their curriculum, at least one course related to research, those that are enrolled in any semester of college and those who belong to a medical school officially recognized by ASPEFAM.

It excluded all those students taking part in any university scientific society and all those that did not want to be involved in the study.

Data collection:
A self – administered, anonymous and voluntary survey approved by a previous study¹⁸ was applied. This survey was subjected to a 64-contestants pilot test, to whom it was calculated a Croanbach’s coefficient alpha of 0.91, indicating a high reliability of the instrument.

This survey embraced six sections: 1) personal data and appreciation on university work on research (07 items), 2) activities and courses related to research (08 items), 3) strategies, policies and technics about promotion on research (20 items), 4) award and acknowledgement for undergraduate researchers (04 items).

To survey, at least one manager of each scientific society from Peruvian universities was approached, so he/she would approach medicine students from his/her medical schools in order to make them participate in the study.

Data collection was carried out from November 2016 until January 2017, via email, which contained the self-administered survey with its informed consent.

Variables
The variable was “university work on undergraduate scientific medical research”, which was studied on the basis of: a) activities and courses related to research, b) Research accomplished by professors and university officials, c) Award and acknowledgement for undergraduate researchers.

Statistical Analysis
Variables analysis was of descriptive level. Data were registered in a designed basis for the study in Microsoft Excel 2013® statistical packages.

Ethical Considerations
This research work was approved for its carrying out by Research Ethics Board of San Juan Bautista Private University (UPSJB).

Furthermore, to ensure ethics in this study, informed consent was provided. Moreover, handling of personal data was carried out through numerical codes. As well, every data collected was in custody only by the research, who kept watch in order to ensure the most privacy possible in every research process.

RESULTS

Students from 19 out of 25 universities recognized by ASPEFAM participated in the study. Nine of them were nationals, and remaining 10 were private, with an average of 21 students per each medical school, reaching a 400 students-survey population. 57.8% belong to private universities, and only 23.3% studied at Lima universities. Concerning students’ appreciation towards their universities work in undergraduate research, 78.8% rated this work like still “poor” (Table N°01).

Students’ majority from both national and private universities agreed their colleges carried out scientific activities such as research conferences, symposiums or scientific congresses, as well as scheduled courses related to research within the curriculum. However, 79.3% of students stated absence of extracurricular research courses at their universities.

Likewise, 56.3% of students do not feel appropriately skilled to achieve scientific publishing solely following research courses provided by the medical school.

On the other hand, a high percentage stated most projects carried out while studying only represent their courses final grade, but do not have intention to neither be part of scientific events nor to be published (Table N° 02).



Table Nº 03 shows medicine students’ appreciation concerning extracurricular and curricular courses provided their universities. Students’ majority from both national and private universities qualified curricular courses quality as regular. Nonetheless, a small group rated these courses like poor or zero. The most frequently taken curricular course was Research Methodology. Regarding extracurricular courses, only 20.8% out of total number of students took one of these courses and they mostly qualified them as regular.

Moreover, it was also consulted if students knew their professor did some research. The majority stated only “a few” professors, that have taught them, did some research, as well as had published original researches in scientific medical journals. Similarly, 76.5% of respondents sometime tried to carry out whether a research project or a research work with counseling from their professors, being supported mostly at no cost (Tabla Nº 04).

Concerning award and acknowledgement for researchers, strategies and policies for scientific research, around 48% of respondents affirmed their universities do not awarded prizes or gave recognition for those students and professor who achieved publication of research papers in Scientific Medical Journals, as well 54.7% mentioned there was no diffusion made of those publications.

DISCUSSION

Among main detected problems through students’ appreciation are poor university training in terms of undergraduate research and no encouragement to students in order to do science. All this support the fact that 78.8% of students, via surveys, had rated universities work on undergraduate research like “poor”.

Regarding poor training, it is mostly identified because students do not feel appropriately skilled by their university neither to achieve scientific publishing, nor to produce and sustain their thesis¹⁷. This is also mentioned in Molina et al¹⁸study, where it a was a large group of students that considered poor research-related curriculum provided by universities, and the sole way out they found was seek for extracurricular courses, not taught by universities, but by other entities, which were complete and had a better quality^19-21, according to students.

Concerning little support for undergraduate research, it is clear universities are not training human resources in research^22,23. Neither do they provide competitive funds, which could help battle against one of the most evident difficulties for doing undergraduate research in Peru, besides they are commonly targeted only to professors, according to Arroyo et al^24-27.

Projects, research papers and thesis are forming solely part of courses’ grades, and they are frequently a further requirement for degree. But students are not being encouraged to publish this type of scientific contributions. Likewise, students who had attained achievements in scientific field. Otherwise, more students would be encouraged to do research^28,29.

On the other hand, it is clear universities do not count on environments that encourage research, given that, according to this study, labs are solely being used for academic education, but no for carrying out scientific studies of greater complexity³⁰.

Furthermore, there is the absence of research incubators at universities, given that it is still expected that students reach cycles where they take any research course to just start doing science. That is the reason why they are not being encouraged to do research since they begin their career, which would be clearly more helpful and would enhance research in basic science^31,32.

Among limitations of research, we have lack of work accessibility to both medical schools and their students, given that they are located in different latitudes of Peru. Besides that, it was firstly proposed to carry out a stratified probabilistic sampling per year of studying. However, there was a big difficulty when making contact with every medical school concerning permits to obtain students information in order to know the total number of students per cycle and/or year of studying. Likewise, there were many complications while surveying to make contact with the required total number of students per year of studying and Peruvian medical school. Thus, a non-probabilistic by convenience sampling was employed instead, which was maybe not the best option, but allowed embracing students from different years of career per school, and obtaining various points of view about university work on research.

On the other side, among strengths this research presents, the fact of being a multicenter study that embraced students’ appreciation from 19 medical schools is highlighted. In contrast to other researches that only gather local information from their university worlds.

Moreover, this study is one of the few studies at Peru level that has investigated the reality of undergraduate scientific research, after adopting University Law N° 30220, in 2014. Before this adoption, university work on research was not well appreciated, that is the need to know if there had been a change in the short-to-medium term after adopting this law.

OUTCOME

More than 50% of respondents rate research in their universities like poor, because it is being showed to every student a poor image and lack of concern for developing science. Thus, it is suggested to start establishing policies and strategies focused on research, specific pear each university world, and they should be already applied. Similarly, it is recommended to enhance diffusion of scientific accomplishments obtained by every university, and to reinforce research courses since the start of the career and to simultaneously encourage publishing on scientific journals.

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Authorship credit: MN took part in design of the article, delivery of outputs, analysis and interpretation of data, wording of article, and approval of the final version, contribution of patients or study material, and management consultancy.
Grant funds origin: Self-funded.
Conflicts of interests: The autor of this research work states not to have any conflicto of interest.

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Correspondence: Mayron D. Nakandakari Gómez
Address: Mz. A5 Lot. 10 AAHH. Cerro Candela. San Martín de Porres. Lima, Peru.
Cellphone: (+51) 1 973-868114
Email: mayron.nakandakari@outlook.com