Abstract
Objective: To determine the level of awareness of clinical years' medical students about the risk factors of Cardiovascular Diseases (CVDs)
Design: A cross-sectional study was done.
Setting: Male and female medical campus of King Abdulaziz University (KAU), Jeddah, Saudi Arabia
Subjects: Two hundred and seventeen medical students during their clinical clerkship (4th-6th years)
Intervention(s): A multistage stratified random sampling was used. Data was collected through a validated, anonymous, confidential, self-administered questionnaire. Questions about risk factors of CVDs were asked. Both descriptive and analytical statistics were done. Knowledge score was calculated, and classified into a score of poor, fair and satisfactory tertiles.
Main outcome measure(s): The level of awareness about risk factors of CVDs and the affecting factors
Results: A total of 217 students participated in the study. The majority of them correctly answered questions asked about the effect of exercise (97.2%), blood pressure (89.4%), diabetes mellitus (86.2%) and dyslipidemia (65%) on CVDs. However, only 8.8% recognized smoking as a predictor, fruits and vegetables as protective factors from CVDs. Furthermore, less than one-third (31.8%) of respondents identified the meaning of central obesity. Neither students' gender nor their educational grade had statistical significant associations with their level of knowledge about risks factors of CVDs (p > 0.05).
Conclusion: Students had good knowledge about some CVDs risk factors, and some deficiency was found in other areas (smoking, diet and central obesity). There's a need to modify medical schools' curricula for more addressing the risk factors of CVDs. Conduction of more extra-curricular educational activities about CVDs is required.