ESPE Abstracts

Introduction: Since diabetes mellitus is one of the major non-communicable diseases, therefore it is important taking this subject in some details during the undergraduate medical course, to prepare the students for recognizing the disease and understanding its management. In Sultan Qaboos University, the medical students go through a pre-internship training period, immediately after their final year of clerkship and just before starting their internship.

Objectives: To study the knowledge of the final year medical students about diagnosis and management of diabetes mellitus and compare it with the knowledge of intern doctors practicing at Sultan Qaboos University Hospital. The outcomes may also help us understanding the retention and the use of the previously taught lessons about diabetes.

Methods: An observational cross-sectional study was conducted at Sultan Qaboos University using an online questionnaire via SurveyMonkey website that was sent to the final year medical students of (2019-2020) batch and the intern doctors of the same year.

Results: A total of 80 responses were received from 41 final year medical students and 39 intern doctors. The principal knowledge about diabetes was similar among both groups. However, more medical students were aware of post viral infection role in the development of T1DM compared to a small number of intern doctors (19 vs 6, p-value of 0.001). Medical students were more aware than intern doctors in knowing that HbA1c is reflecting on the glycemic status of the preceding 3 months (p-value 0.018). Medical students were better in their response to whether T1DM is curable disease or not with statistical significance (p 0.04). Response to other questions about management of diabetes mellitus showed no significant statical difference between the two groups. Choosing “I don’t know” option was selected by more students than interns during this survey.

Conclusion: The study showed not much difference between the knowledge of the final year medical students and intern doctors about diagnosing and managing diabetes mellitus. Interestingly, intern doctors’ attitude was towards answering almost all the questions and sometimes giving wrong answers compared to medical students who frequently said “do not know” when they did not know. Intern doctors to be reminded about their own limitations to avoid giving wrong decisions in the clinical practice. Pre-internship course may contain more material about diabetes mellitus, and Educators may consider different methods of teaching to consolidate the knowledge of their students and contributing in minimizing the knowledge regression.