Global Health in Undergraduate Education: Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Sudanese Medical Students towards Global Health Education: a cross-sectional study

Abstract

Introduction: Globalization and other relevant phenomena such as healthcare workforce, ageing of the population, brain drain etc. all necessitate medical curricula to transcend national medicine and encompass a more global approach. This is especially true in the context of developing countries which currently act as passive recipients of ongoing global decisions, health inequities or pandemics. The aim of this research was to study the Knowledge, Attitude, and Practice of Sudanese medical students towards global health education and the impact of extra-curricular activities on their knowledge and attitudes.

Methods: This was a descriptive cross-sectional institutional based study. The study was conducted in five Sudanese Universities and participants were selected using systematic random sampling. An online-based, self-administered questionnaire was used, samples were collected between November 2019 until April 2020 and data was analyzed using SPSS version 25.

Results: 1176 medical students were involved. The study revealed a poor level of knowledge among 72.4%, and only 2.3% of respondents revealed a good level of knowledge. Mean knowledge scores between Universities slightly vary and have shown positive correlation according to the grade of the medical student. Regarding attitude, the results demonstrated the high level of interest of medical students in global health, their agreement in including global health in their official medical education curriculum (64.8%) and their consideration of including global health as part of their future career (46.8%).

Conclusion: The study concluded that there is a knowledge gap among Sudanese medical students regarding global health education, although students showed good attitudes and willingness to include global health in their official curriculum.

Recommendations: Global health education should be implemented in the official curriculums of Sudanese Universities, and Universities should do global partnerships and increase the learning and teaching opportunities in this interesting field.

Keywords: Attitude; Education; Global health; Knowledge; Medical students; Practice.

Figure 1

Shows the mean knowledge score of medical students in each grade, Sudan 2019–2020 (n = 1176). The mean knowledge score is highest among fourth-year medical students, while it is lowest among first-year medical students. In general, seniors’ mean knowledge score values are higher than the mean values of juniors (first, second and third years).