Background:
Research is a creative activity to increase knowledge about a specific thing in doubt.
Health research provides a great impact on the prevention, diagnosis, and treatment of
diseases and health care programs policy. . Early exposure to research can teach students
not only how to conduct research, but they too learn problem-solving attitudes and
profoundly influence undergraduates’ careers and continue to impact their professional
lives. These attributes are vital for their development as competent and proficient
healthcare practitioners
Objectives:
Our objectives were to evaluate the attitude and practice of medical students towards
research and to investigate the barriers in conducting a medical research among medical
undergraduates.
Methodology:
It was a cross sectional descriptive study in 3 different medical colleges (NWSM, RMC,
and PIMC) was conducted from March 2023 to August 2023. It included 295 medical
undergraduate students. A self-administered, pretested, and structured questionnaire was
completed by 295 medical students (first to final year). The questionnaire consisted of
demographic data, students’ attitude, practices, and barriers. The collected data were
analyzed using appropriate statistical methods. The level of statistical significance was
defined as P ≤ 0.05

Results:
In this study, we analyzed data from 295 participants across three different medical
colleges. The gender distribution was 55.3% male and 44.7% female, and participants
were distributed across various study years. Our findings revealed overall positive
attitudes (57.1%) among medical students towards research. Statistical analysis showed
no significant associations of attitude with gender (P= 0.417) or institution (P= 0.485)
and year of study (P value = 0.67). There has been a statistically significant difference
between year of study regarding their practice of medical research (P value= 0.0001),
where the higher percent of final year students (55.8%) reported participation in
previous medical researches than first year students (14.8%). The most important
obstacle predictors implicated in not conducting research among all the studied students
were lack of time due to educational commitments (77.6%), insufficient research
knowledge (64.7%). Other challenges include lack of motivation and guidance,
difficulty in selecting research topics, obtaining approval from review boards’
inaccessibility to literature reviews received mixed opinions. Lack of mentorship and
teamwork was emphasized, with 55.3% of participants expressing agreement.
Conclusion:
This study highlights a generally positive attitude among medical students towards
research, but reported with low participation in research activity, while the year of study
influences research participation. The study also identified barriers, including time
constraints and a need for more mentorship.