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Original Publication Date
2024
Document Type
Presentation
Abstract
Research focuses on comparing basic genetics knowledge between medical school students in Ecuador and those in the USA.
Transcription
Badi Quinteros, comparing basic genetics knowledge between medical school students and Ecuador and students in the USA. Badi is in the School of Medicine, and their advisor is Dr. Elizabeth G. Bailey. Human genetics research has increased exponentially in the last 30 to 40 years, from being able to do 190 testsin 1993 to almost 80,000 by the end of this year. Isn't this incredible? However, there is a gap between what the industry knows about testing and how physicians know how to utilize those tests and what they can communicate to patients. Imagine this situation. You start developing some symptoms and you start noticing that this is common within your family. You go to your medical physician, and you talk to them and what's going on, but they really don't know how to help you what to ask next, or what to do. Wouldn’t this be concerning and frustrating for you as a patient? Research shows that in the United States, physicians do not know how to help people who have genetic disorders. This is not solely an issue in the United States. It is also an issue in the Netherlands, Croatia and Japan. But research has shown and suggested that this is because of the lack of human basic genetic knowledge and training to medical professionals. We decided to look into what's going on in Latin American countries, because I'm from Ecuador. We decided to look specifically at Ecuadorian Medical school students, and we couldn't find anything related to this. This is what we decided to do. We created a project in which based on a survey, we collected data from these students. The survey had two main areas. The first part, we asked them questions like, what is DNA, with a purpose to test their basic human genetics knowledge. The second part, we asked them about their feeling towards it to self-report this mastery of the skills that they're learning in school. When we looked at the data that we collected, we can see that the mean score for Ecuadorian medical school students is around 50% a little bit lower. But they reported that they're learning the material in school. This is very interesting. They feel that they're learning the material, but they're actually not really learning the material. We decided to collect data from United States as well to be able to compare them. We collected data for undergraduate, graduate and medical school students in the United States. Why? In Ecuador, medical school starts right after you finish high school. However, in the US, usually people will go through undergraduate and then go into medical school. So when we look at the results for the US population, we can see that their average score is around 80%, but they also medical school students in the US have shown that they feel they're learning the material here. There's this knowledge gap. And why do we care? We care because we want every single patient who have genetic disorders to be able to feel comfortable and confident when they go to visit their physician. We propose our next steps to create a module in which we will collect data from medical school students again from Ecuador. We will test them again, we will teach them this basic human genetic knowledge and skills that they should know. We will test them again at the end, and we hope with the use of this module, we will increase physician and care for those who have genetic disorders. This module should not be only used by Ecuadorian Medical School students. We recognize that this is a global issue, and this module, we hope that will be translated to any other languages and we be given to other physicians like in countries like Croatia, Japan, and even the United States. Thank you.
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470119322 - 1_ebnol0sz - PID 1888231.txt (3 kB)
Transcription
Comments
Third place winner of the 10th Annual VCU 3MT® Competition, held on October 4, 2024