PLACE OF ENVIRONMENTAL HISTORY IN DIAGNOSIS: PERSPECTIVE OF MEDICAL SCHOOL STUDENTS

This study was conducted to investigate the medical faculty students awareness about the importance of environmental history in medical diagnosis. This descriptive study was conducted on the fourth and sixth grade students from medical faculty. The questionnaire, which was divided into 2 sections, was done by face to face interview. The first section ascertained socio-demographics and knowledge about environmental history. The second section which was consisted of 25 closed-ended questions, was about attitudes and practices of assistants in environmental history taking. From 25 questions, each true answer was taken as '1 point'; false answer as '0 point' and awareness score was calculated. Chi-square, Mann-Whitney U and Students T test were used to analyse the data. Average awareness point of the students regarding questioning of some environmental factors was calculated as 20.15 4.93 over 25 points. There was no significant difference between 4th and 6th grade students about average awareness point. (p > 0.05) There was no significant difference between males and females with respect to having training on environmental history previously, willingness to have training about this subject and average awareness point (p > 0.05). Only 24.3% (n = 56) of the students stated that they had an environmental history training until today. In 4th grade students this rate was 15.2% and in 6th grade students was 38%. Most of the students participating in the survey (80.4%) said that the first thing that comes to their mind is 'living place'. For frequency of asking questions about environmental history 41.7% of the students said always, 25.7% of students mostly, 23% of students frequently, 8.7% of the students sometimes. In this study, students of Medical Faculty of Adnan Menderes University were found to be inadequate awareness about environmental history. It is important to increase the attention of medical school students to environmental history and to include the environmental health and environmental medicine in medical curriculum.