COMPUTER EDUCATION - ATTITUDES AND OPINIONS OF 1ST-YEAR MEDICAL-STUDENTS

Students' attitudes towards medical informatics were evaluated with se lf-administered questionnaires, answered by 140 (77%) first-year medic al and dental students. Fourteen per cent classified their computer li teracy as negligible and 49% as deficient. Ninety-six per cent had use d a computer before and 59% used one regularly. Nineteen per cent had computer education in secondary school and a further 16% attended cour ses given by a computer company. Only 16% read regularly about informa tics. These results are similar to those observed in more industrializ ed countries, except that high-school education is more deficient. To 93% of these students, computer literacy is important for doctors, and to 85% computers may be very useful in many areas of health care. In the opinion of 66% of students, the computer-based patient record will be available within the next 3 to 10 years. Women showed lesser compu ter literacy (77% computer illiteracy to 39% in men), but there were n o relevant differences in attitudes, behaviour and beliefs towards med ical informatics between gender, for the same level of computer litera cy. Computer education in the undergraduate curriculum was demanded by 92%, and 75% of these preferred an elective course. Weekly hours sugg ested for lectures should be 1 (54%) or 2 (42%), and for hands-on prac tice 2 (54%) or 4 (31%) hours. The curriculum should include medical a pplications (83% of students), information science theory and technolo gy (44%), micro-informatics (44%), bibliographic database search (27%) , programming languages (23%) and statistical packages (23%). Gender, computer literacy or course did not correlate significantly with stude nts' opinions about the contents of undergraduate education.