Medical students’ hygiene training on healthy eating as part of classes at the department of hygiene

Abstract

Maintaining health and commitment to a healthy lifestyle among students is the basis for their further professional activities, which is true not only for future physicians. The medical students’ hygiene education is especially important during their university studies, since it is an element of the future physician personality formation. The study was aimed to substantiate the technology for the medical students’ hygiene training provided as part of their classes at the Department of Hygiene. Hygiene training was performed in the group of 173 students of the General Medicine and Pediatric Faculties (index group) as part of the classes on hygiene at the Department of Hygiene, Pediatric Faculty, Pirogov Russian National Research Medical University, for one semester. The equivalent comparison group formed by the copy pair method also comprised 173 medical students of the General Medicine and Pediatric Faculties. Questioning and monitoring of the medical students’ progress were used to assess the hygiene training efficiency. The data were processed with the Statistica 13 PL software package. It was shown that the General Medicine and Pediatric Faculty students’ hygiene training, that involved the use of checklists and visual materials, provided as part of hygiene classes, was possible. During the classes at the Depatment of Hygiene 95.0% of medical students in the index group noted they had started to follow the recommendations from the checklist, while no students having1–2 meals a day were found; the students’ motivation to study hygiene as a subject improved, which was reflected in their end of semester grade that was (М±m) 86.6±0.6 points on average in the index group and 80.6±0.7 points on average in the comparison group (p≤0.05). Hygiene training of medical students provided during practical hygiene classes proved its effectiveness. The results of the test use of checklists during the semester were positive.