Self-perceived knowledge level of epidemic management in medical residents prior to the start of the COVID-19 pandemic in Mexico

Abstract

AbstractIntroduction: COVID-19 was declared a pandemic in March 2020, requiring a comprehensive response from all healthcare systems, including Mexicos. As medical residents training did not involve epidemic response, we decided to evaluate their level of training on this subject, specifically self-perceived knowledge level and capacity to respond to epidemiological crises.Methodology:Medical residents from two hospitals belonging to PEMEX (Mexicos state-owned petroleum company) were included in a cross-sectional study. All participants answered a modified version of the survey developed by the University of Lovainas Center for Research and Education in Emergency Care. Participants were analyzed according to their relevant clinical or surgical residency tracks. Data were analyzed using through Chi-square tests, t-tests, MannWhitney U tests, Kruskal-Wallis tests, and Pearson and Spearman correlation coefficients with significance established at p 0.05.Results: Of a total of 94 resident participants in this study, 56.7 self-perceived themselves as being poorly prepared to confront the pandemic. Only 25.5 of the participants referred previous experience in medical responses to public health emergencies, and only 35.1 reported ever receiving education on this topic. Conclusions: Medical residentswho have been involved with caring for victims of the pandemicare under the general perception that they are not prepared, experienced, or educated enough to respond to such a widespread massive public health emergency.Key words:Emergency health services; pandemic; medical residency.J Infect Dev Ctries2021; 15(11):1597-1602. doi:10.3855jidc.13401(Received 05 July 2020 Accepted 17 June 2021) Copyright 2021 Reyna-Figueroa et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Introduction Following an outbreak of pneumonia of unknown cause in December 2019 in the city of Wuhan, China, SARS-COV-2 was identified as the causative agent in 2020 [1]. By March 2020, the COVID-19 outbreak was declared a pandemic by the World Health Organization. This declaration set off a series of response and mitigation strategies, including social distancing and lockdowns in more than 170 countries [2,3]. These response strategies involved educational institutions of varying levels, including tertiary education [4]. From the very first moments of the pandemic, world medical schools adopted these strategies and restricted medical students access to areas of hospitals dedicated to patient care [5]. The pandemic crisis eventually led to hiring and mobilizing medical students and retired doctors to take care of the health care problem caused by the pandemic in the country. England accelerated the graduation of last-year medical students to integrate them into the labor force, although this strategy showed some fears like students becoming an unnecessary transmission source [6]. While medical residents are graduated medical doctors, they remain students [7] of a national program for the training of specialized doctors. All 9,671 graduated medical doctors who have been residing in Mexico since 2020, exposed to COVID-19 during this sanitary contingency [8]. The Mexican residency program takes place in numerous health institutions all over the country, all of which receive endorsement and financial support from both private and public universities and institutions. One such health institute is that belonging to PEMEX (the abbreviation for Petroleos Mexicanos,