Medical students still in dark about AIDS
Medical students still in dark about AIDS
JAKARTA (JP): Most Indonesian medical school students learn about Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS) through the mass media rather than from scientific journals and lectures, a survey team has discovered.
The survey, conducted by a team from the Atmajaya Catholic University Research Center last year, found that the students scored well in their knowledge of the definition and epidemiology of AIDS and the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV), but scored poorly on their understanding of the demographic facts of HIV/AIDS infections and its clinical symptoms.
"Fifty-four percent of medical students learn about HIV and AIDS from the mass media, 11 percent from seminars, 4.2 percent from scientific journals and only 4.5 percent from their professors," said Irwanto, who heads the research center that conducted the survey.
The results were presented on Thursday at a seminar sponsored by Private Agencies Collaborating Together, Project Concern International and the university. The seminar was attended by academics, such as Kartono Mohamad, Firman Lubis and Wahjuning Ramelan, medical practitioners, students and people involved in AIDS-prevention activities.
The survey targeted 356 randomly chosen medical students in their sixth to eighth semester at seven private and state universities in Jakarta.
The survey discovered that many students felt they lacked knowledge about the transmission, prevention and clinical tasks needed to face AIDS and HIV.
"Many of the students consider people with HIV to have high- risk sexual behavior, but they are also aware that being doctors they should not think this way," Irwanto said.
Medical students blame their lack of knowledge about AIDS/HIV on the stressful curriculum which gives them little time to broaden their perspectives.
The survey recommended medical students seek counseling to better cope with their patients and emphasized the need to handle the transmission of AIDS/HIV through a multidisciplinary approach. This was stressed because AIDS is an opportunistic infection which showed no specific signs in its early stages.
Kartono, a member of the Indonesian Family Planning Society and a former chairman of the Indonesian Doctors Association, said he was "not surprised" by the findings.
He pointed out that even among Indonesian doctors, the perception of AIDS/HIV varied greatly. "I know of doctors who refuse to include condoms as a method to prevent the spread of AIDS/HIV," he said.
Firman, a professor at the University of Indonesia's school of medicine who is involved in various non-governmental organizations on AIDS, pointed out that the medical science curriculum needs revision because most of it is simply memorization and was irrelevant to real tasks in community.
Doctors, he said, should see their patients through more "human" eyes.
Wahjuning, a member of the Consortium for Health Sciences which provides input to the ministry of education and culture regarding the curriculum for medical sciences, said his office is presently revising the 1983 curriculum used by medical schools.
The new curriculum, he said, would contain the same 161 credits per semester, but will allow individual schools to add up to 40 more credits in subjects they considered appropriate.
"It could be used to update students knowledge about AIDS/HIV, community health, or microbiology," Wahjuning said.(pwn)