Effect of training among medical students about awareness of speech & hearing disorders: a post then pre comparison study

Abstract

Introduction: Although medical education prepares medicos’ for the common issues in practice, medical college and residency curricula do not adequately teach the professional students about the speech and hearing disorder, unless the college has appointed an audiologist or speech pathologist who can train them. Objective: To evaluate the awareness of speech and hearing disorders by post and then pre design method in a group of medical students (medicos) Subjects: 100 medicos who were in the III year MBBS were participated. Material: A questionnaire with 5 categories each containing 5 questions about speech and hearing disorders were used. Procedure: Subjects were first given training/lecture in post test and instructed to tick one correct answers and later pre test was conducted where they had to tick one correct answer thinking what would have been their answers if training/lecture was not given. Analysis: The mean values of post and pre-test’s answers were calculated and converted into percentages and compared among post and pre test and between the categories. Results: Results indicated that Medicos’ had improved substantially in their knowledge and awareness about speech and hearing disorders from 64% to 92%, with relation to the five category in the questionnaire about speech and hearing disorders- ‘Tests used to assess’ (58% to 94%), ‘normal development’ (58% to 94%) and ‘general awareness’ both (70% to 96%), ‘early identification’ (75% to 87%) and ‘rehabilitation’ (77% to 87%). The study showed a difference between post and pre test awareness regarding awareness of speech and hearing disorders. The results provided which aspects of the training may be given more priorities in the future. Conclusion: Hence there is an improvement of awareness or knowledge after training; therefore, there is a need of education medicos in the medical education curriculum.