Perception and Interest of Medical Students Regarding Basic Medical Science Subjects

Background: Basic Medical Sciences (BMS) subjects are the core and pillar for understanding medical education. The students' interest in BMS and their choice of subject of BMS as a career is limited in Pakistan as most of the medical students opt clinical sciences. Aim: To look into perception and interest of medical students regarding BMS as career choice. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Avicenna Medical college involving 3rd year medical students. They were asked about demographic details and about their perception towards BMS. Also they were asked for reasons not joining BMS as career. All of the data were analyzed statistically by SPSS version 20. Results: A total of 86 medical students participated in the study. Mean age of the participants was found to be 20.06 +/- 0.901 years. Of these, 55(63.9%) were females while 31 (36.1%) were male. A total of 10.4% of participants showed their interest towards BMS and 8.1% agreed on opting BMS as their future career. Another important question was the reason for not opting BMS as career. Most of the participants (38.3%) showed no interest in BMS, 8.1% had a family pressure and 17.4% labeled less financial growth as a cause. When interst was stratified according to demographic details, it was found not significant in any of the variables. Conclusion: We conclude that attracting the medical students towards BMS is a must do job, particularly in a resource constraints country like us. BMS teachers can do this being a good role model and integrating BMS subjects along with clinical subjects.