Survey of Knowledge and Opinions Regarding to Clinical Researchs of Assistant Medicine Students Attendant in Internal and Surgical Sciences at a University Hospital

Aim: The purpose of this research is to investigate the knowledge and attitudes of assistant medicine students attendant in internal and surgical sciences at a university hospital regarding to clinical research and the factors affecting them. Method: This research is a cross sectional study. The sample of the study was comprised of 261 asisstant medicine students who work in internal (197) and surgical (64) departments at Dokuz Eylul University Hospital. The data was collected between March-April 2017 via a survey created by the researchers. While each right/positive answer was marked as 1 point, wrong/negative as well as "no idea" answers were marked as 0 points for the calculations. The data has been analysed by employing descriptive statistics, independent t-tests and one-way ANOVA. The significance level was set at 0.05. Results: The mean age of 261 respondents was 28 ± 3. Of the respondents, 47.9% were female, 52.1% were male. It was determined that 26.4% of the respondents were trained in clinical research and 24.1% were in various positions in clinical research. Of the total 136 clinical trials that were undertaken, 20.6% were international, 79.4% were national, 13.2% were industry-centered, 86.8% were initiated by the researcher, 83.1% were single-centered and 16.9% were multi-centered. The results indicated that, about the question concerning legal and ethical regulations considered in clinical drug trials, most of the respondents (61.3%) were found to know the Helsinki Declaration correctly, but only 7.7% were answered all options correctly. The mean response rate of the questionnaires, in which consist of 21 generalized statements about the clinical researches, it was found as 13.4 ± 4.2 (63.8%, min 0, max 20). When participants were asked about their opinions about their willingness to be assigned to clinical research, 66.3% of them wanted to participate, 23.4% of them did not want to participate and 10.3% of them were indecisive. Participants who were trained in clinical research were found to have significantly higher knowledge of clinical research than untrained participants (p <0.05). Conclusion: It was found that, assistant medicine students who have educated in clinical research and/or have written clinical research protocol previously, have higher knowledge level about clinical research. Assistant medicine students have potential to be delegated as principal and sub-investigators in future and providing them with basic training programmes about clinical research will encourage them to participate these studies as well as increase the number and the quality of clinical researches in Turkey.