Impact Of Ophthalmology Posting On The Attitude And Perception Of Senior Medical Students In A Nigerian Medical School To Ophthalmology As A Specialty And A Career Choice

Background: Ophthalmology posting/clerkship is an integral part of the curriculum of medical schools globally. This provides ophthalmic educators an excellent opportunity to positively influence the medical students undergoing the posting. Materials and Methods: A pretest-posttest, noncontrolled, nonrandomized experimental study was conducted among 5th year medical students of the College of Medicine of the University of Lagos who underwent ophthalmology posting between November 2015 and February 2016. All respondents were requested to fill a semistructured questionnaire on the first and the last day of the posting. Information on sociodemographic data, perception and attitude toward ophthalmology, future practice plan, and a possibility of taking up a career in ophthalmology were obtained using a semistructured questionnaire. The data were analyzed using IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences version 20. Results: A total of 210 out of the 228 students participated in this study constituting a response rate of 92.1%. The mean age was 23.0 +/- 2.3 years, and the male-to-female ratio was 1:1.1. There was a statistically significant improvement in the overall mean attitudinal scores after posting compared to the scores before posting (P < 0.01). Furthermore, there was a statistically significant improvement in the overall mean perception scores after posting compared to the scores before posting (P < 0.01). Although there was an increase in the mean score of disposition of respondents to ophthalmology as a future career from 2.18 before posting to 2.30 after posting, this was not statistically significant (P = 0.06). Conclusion: The 4-week ophthalmology posting impacted positively on the perception and attitude of respondents to ophthalmology as a discipline, but did not translate to a significant improvement in the consideration of ophthalmology as a future career.