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Medical education was challenged and re-imagined during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study aims to examine the consequent changes in medical school curricula alongside students’ mental and physical health.

It is observed that 549 medical students (response rate: 79.7%) from 31 of 37 public medical schools in Germany completed a cross-sectional online survey. Students answered questions regarding teaching, internet use, COVID-19 and well-being. A multivariate logistic regression examined factors associated with depressed mood, insomnia and headache.

Academic teaching moved to a virtual environment (91%), whilst practical activities were suspended or cancelled (88%). Virtual teaching modality, quantity and quality were well-perceived, yet 35% of respondents were dissatisfied with their internet connection. Consequently, students worried about the pandemic’s adverse effect on their quality as a doctor (60%) and thought about postponing their studies (30%). Students were frequently engaged in the treatment of COVID-19 patients (36%). Daily screen time was significantly associated with depressed mood, insomnia and headache. Negative changes in mental and physical health were frequently observed.

Students’ experience with digital education during the COVID-19 pandemic was mixed. Whilst teaching modality, quantity and quality were well-perceived, students’ mental and physical health deteriorated. Further longitudinal studies investigating the impact of digital education on students’ well-being are necessary.

Besides teaching, faculties must quickly digitalize and strengthen social communities and offer targeted support services for students.

This is the first cross-sectional survey exploring medical students’ experience with virtual medical teaching alongside their mental and physical well-being in Germany.

The current work aimed to investigate the private tutoring phenomenon among Egyptian medical faculty students.

The present work is a cross-sectional observational study using an online, anonymous questionnaire disseminated to Egyptian medical students and instructors via social platforms and university e-mails. All subjects involved in the survey gave informed consent to begin the questionnaire. No financial incentives were awarded to finish the questionnaire.

In total, 79.2% of the surveyed students (n = 198) admitted taking private medical courses during their medical study courses till the date of the survey. The Egyptian students, 68.4% (n = 171), markedly surpassed the non-Egyptian participants (n = 79, 31.6%). Males were nearly double the female participants (n = 162 and 88 consecutively).The highest academic-level-seeking private medical tutoring was the fifth-year students (n = 66, 26.4%).

A large sample size is needed to strengthen the statistical power and permit the generalization over the population, so more research work in this aspect is recommended. Also, subject-specific data in private medical tutoring need to be investigated in future works. Similar global work is recommended to allow better comparison of data worldwide.

When conceptualizing medical education processes and developing its regulations, the dynamics of private medical instruction should be taken into account, especially concerning socioeconomic inequities and efficiency in medical school systems. This work has been the first to investigate the private tutoring phenomenon among Egyptian medical students to the authors' best knowledge.

Appropriate access to formally-trained health workers for people living in rural and underdeveloped areas is a continuing challenge worldwide. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the willingness of formally-trained health workers to practice in underdeveloped areas and its main determinants among medical students in the western provinces of Iran.

A total of 753 medical students from four provinces in western Iran (Kermanshah, Ilam, Lorestan and Kurdistan) were surveyed cross-sectionally in 2017. A self-administrated questionnaire was used to collect data on sociodemographic characteristics, willingness to practice in underdeveloped areas, intrinsic (e.g. desire to help others and self-interest in medicine) and extrinsic (e.g. the high income of physicians and social prestige) motivations of the study population. Multivariable logistic regression was used to identify the main determinants of willingness to practice in underdeveloped areas among medical students after their graduation.

The results indicated that 58.3 percent of students were willing to practice in underdeveloped areas. While 59 percent of the study population had a strong extrinsic motivation to study medicine, the remaining 41 percent of the study population had a strong intrinsic motivation to study medicine. The logistic regression results indicated that low parental professional and educational status, an experience of living in rural areas and having strong intrinsic motivation were associated with greater willingness to practice in underdeveloped areas.

This is the first study to investigate the willingness to practice in underdeveloped areas and its main determinants among medical students in the west of Iran.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate perceptions towards a career in psychiatry among medical students and psychiatrists and identify how recruitment into the specialty may be improved.

This study locally compares medical student and psychiatric doctor responses to a structured online survey and structured interviews with key managerial figures in the Humber NHS Foundation Trust.

Comparison across two main areas (pre-decision exposure to psychiatry and reasons for considering a psychiatric career) found that both students and doctors were influenced to make a choice about a career in psychiatry during medical school. Medical students found compatibility with family life to be more important when considering psychiatry, whereas doctors cited content-based reasons as significant pull factors. Stigma and fear of being harmed deterred some students from choosing a career in psychiatry. Structured interview responses reiterated the importance of pre-medical school and undergraduate mentorship in bolstering future recruitment to psychiatry.

Medical students perceive certain career issues differently to their postgraduate counterparts. Widening the content-based appeal of psychiatry and optimising the medical school experience of the specialty via varied and high-quality placements may be a key step towards tackling the national shortfall in qualified psychiatrists.

This is the first published study comparing medical student and psychiatric doctor perceptions of a career in psychiatry.

The reduction of tobacco use among medical students is a potentially powerful strategy to reduce tobacco use among future health professionals, who in turn, can have significant impact on tobacco use among patients as well as the general population in China. The goal of this study is to update information on the prevalence of cigarette smoking among Chinese medical students and to assess modifiable factors for smoking reduction.

Presented in the paper are descriptive, associative and path model analyses of survey data collected among 758 medical students in year one through year three from Hainan Medical College, Hainan, China.

Among the total 758 participants, 66.9 percent of males and 26 percent of females smoked and 26.5 percent of males and 1.6 percent of females had smoked in the past 30 days. The median monthly expenditure on cigarettes was 30 Chinese Yuan (approximately US$4.25). The likelihood of smoking increased with male gender, more advanced year group, poor academic performance, perceived peer smoking, and depressive symptoms, after controlling for covariates.

Findings reported in this study provide further insight into the smoking prevalence among medical students in China as well as adding to knowledge about several potentially modifiable factors that are related to smoking. Data collected in this study are likely to prove valuable in prioritizing tobacco control among Chinese medical students, as they are future medical doctors, and their smoking behaviors will have strong influence on their patients as well as the general public.

The aim of this paper is to investigate whether undergraduate students in the College of Health Sciences in Niger Delta University are information literate, and to determine whether they are aware of and use different information resources including electronic ones, and to assess their ability to evaluate information before use.

Questionnaire and interview methods were used to collect data from the students.

The students mostly rely on textbooks, medical journals, the internet, colleagues, and the Nigerian National University Commission's virtual library for information. They rarely use electronic resources such as MEDLINE, HINARI, the Cochrane Library, and EbscoHost. This could be because of a lack of awareness and skills necessary to search databases. Problems such as lack of time, the challenge of locating “good citable stuff”, inability to use effectively the medical library, and poor skills in information searching were mentioned. The study recommends that medical librarians and faculty should collaborate in integrating information literacy skills into the medical school curriculum.

This paper may help inform discussion about students' competences for locating, selecting, evaluating and using information essential for lifelong learning.

This paper aims to present the results of a study which was carried out to find out whether the undergraduate students in the College of Health Sciences in Delta State University are aware of and fully utilize the medical databases and other online information resources within and outside the medical library.

A questionnaire and interview methods were used to elicit data from the students.

The results revealed that majority of the students are not aware and do not use the online information resources such as: MEDLINE, HINARI, CINAHL databases, NUC virtual library as sources of information to retrieve materials related to medical literature. This could be as a result of lack of training for information literacy skills and ineffective user education programmes in the medical libraries and medical schools to equip the medical students with necessary skills to use the medical databases and other online information resources. Problems such as lack of skills to use the online information resources, lack of time, poor user education programmes, and slowness of server were mentioned by the students as some factors militating against the effective use of online information resources.

The findings will be useful for medical librarians and faculty in highlighting the need to collaborate in integrating information literacy skills into the medical school curricula in developing countries. Paper type Research paper

There is urgent need to explore medical students’ understandings of mental illness to better support this high-risk group. The purpose of this paper is to evaluate mental health literacy in medical students using the Mental Health Literacy Scale (MHLS), and provide validation of the measure.

In total, 251 participants were recruited from medical schools across the UK. Participants completed demographic details and the MHLS. This paper reports total MHLS scores and their relationships with demographics and experiences with mental illness.

The mean MHLS score was 127.69. MHL was significantly higher in females, and students in later years of study (p<0.05). Over 40 per cent of respondents reported having personal experience of mental illness. This, as well as having a close friend or family member with a mental illness, was associated with higher MHL (p<0.05).

This study is the first to use the MHLS and provide validation of this measure in medical students. Despite high rates of personal experience with mental health issues, medical students’ average MHLS scores were comparable to studies of non-medical student groups. Medical schools should aim to build students’ confidence in recognising and seeking help for mental health issues from the first year of medical training. MHL is a multi-faceted issue; further work is required to improve awareness of risk factors, to better understand why males demonstrate poorer MHL scores than females, and to work towards improving MHL in males.

This paper aims to focus on the information literacy skills and how the resources are being used by medical students of Mahatma Gandhi Medical College and Research Institute (MGMCRI), Pondicherry, India. The main aim is to determine the medical students use, purpose, search strategies and sources through which aware and literacy skills acquired. Further, this paper aims to bring out the problems faced.

A survey method was conducted through a structured questionnaire distributed among 120 medical students from first year to fourth year. Stratified random sampling was used for selection of students.

Findings of the study revealed that medical students largely used medical databases such as Bentham Sciences, ProQuest, PubMed and MedlinePlus. Further, the paper reveals that majority used health information for updating their knowledge and to acquire general information. The students’ information literacy level found minimal, which may be the reason majority of the students found difficulty in locating the desired materials followed by irrelevant information, inadequate e-resources and lack of awareness reported some extent.

The recommendations made based on the study are expected to be beneficial to the authorities and library administration of the surveyed institution to take appropriate measures for effective utilization of resources.

The government has taken an initiative to improve the MBBS admission process in the country to eradicate the academic dishonesty and encourage the deserving candidates for MBBS enrolment. The Supreme Court has paved the way to hold the National Eligibility-cum-Entrance Test (NEET), a common entrance test for admission to undergraduate and postgraduate medical courses, from the 2016-17 academic year onwards. This paper aims to focus on the contention raised by various stakeholders associated with it and examines the pass percentage of plus two State Board examinations in 2015, 2016 and 2017 and admission details for 2016 and 2017.

The researchers adopted exploratory research. The researchers studied the medical admission process at national and global levels. They collected data of MBBS admission, NEET, State Board and CBSE plus two results and information from newspapers, website and magazine articles. Many experts published articles in newspapers. No study analysed data and made an exhaustive exploratory study. This motivates the researcher to do the same. Simple percentage, percentage change, correlation analysis and the sign test are used to determine whether the State Board or CBSE students get benefitted out of NEET to become medical professionals.

There is no significant relationship between MBBS enrolment of students (both State Board and CBSE students) before and after the NEET was introduced. From correlation analysis, it is inferred that the pass percentage of students who studied under State Board and MBBS enrolment were lesser in 2017 than 2016. It is also inferred that many districts students’ enrolment in MBBS course have increased from 2016 to 2017. The researchers concluded that because of NEET, CBSE students got more enrolment in MBBS course in 2017 compared with State Board students in 2016.

The researchers found that the students with State Board examinations enrolled in lesser number for MBBS course than CBSE students in Tamil Nadu. There is a scope for improvement in designing and implementing NEET with the deliberations among different stakeholders involved with the medical education system, which will help in reducing the rampant corruption and, most importantly, pave the way for a selection based on merit in medical education. Possibly, this will also work as a safeguard to the sanctity of the medical profession in India and at the global level.

The researcher collected data from newspapers, websites and journals. Many experts discuss about, for and against NEET. No one analysed the data. This is a unique article that has more statistical analysis and meaningful interpretations from analysis. This paper will be useful to the government at national and global levels to frame medical admission procedure and policies.