851 SMILE: Sustaining Medical Education in A Lockdown Environment. Student Perceptions of a Free Online Access Medical Education Platform as An Adjunct to The Traditional Undergraduate Curriculum During Lockdown

Impact of war on foreign students’ satisfaction with quality of dental and medical education in Ukraine

The objective of this study was to evaluate the changes in foreign students' satisfaction with the quality of dental and medical education considering the impact of the war in Ukraine. The present study was organized in the form of a questionnaire-based survey among 300 foreign students of Medical Faculty and Faculty of Dentistry in Ukraine. The questionnaire was ad mistered via Google form in a multiple-choice, closed-ended format. Students' satisfaction with environment safety and comfort (p < 0.05) and with the collaborative learning offered (p < 0.05) statistically decreased during the war. Sixty percent of the variability in the mean of students' satisfaction with the quality of education during the war could be explained by the satisfaction rate before the war. The need of migration from Ukraine had a stronger inverse correlation with education quality (r = -0.58) than the fact of the war itself (r = -0.32). The war in Ukraine has had a negative impact on the educational process of foreign medical and dental students, even though the quality of education was considered by students to be as high as before and during the war. The personal effort of professors, the quality of study materials, and adequate technical support could potentially overcome the negative impact of the war on student satisfaction with the quality of medical and dental education by the online mode, if the academic medium could be protected from the direct impact of the war or if the influence of the war within the university community could be minimized.

Online urological educational material for medical students: can search engines be trusted?

OBJECTIVES

To determine the credibility of online urological information that medical students are likely to encounter, determine possible discrepancies between the credibility of information pertaining to different areas within urology (especially those less relevant to patients), and assess trends in the sponsorship of online urological educational material.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Health on the Net (HON) principles were used as a validated benchmark to assess the reliability of websites that appeared in the first 150 results of a search using the Google search engine. A variety of urological search terms were used, grouped into three broad categories with varying relevance to patients and medical students. Further analysis focussed on the sponsorship of assessed websites.

RESULTS

A total of 5400 websites were assessed for validation over a set of 36 search terms. Only 843/5400 (15.6%) of these were HONcode accredited, indicating a large proportion of unverified and potentially unreliable information. Search engine rankings usually favoured accredited websites (P = 0.009), and accreditation peaked at 51.1% (184/360) in the first page of results, but sorting became weaker outside the highest search results. The percentage of accredited websites varied significantly between different subcategories of search terms such as conditions (18.3% [329/1800], P = 0.003) and procedures (13.5% [243/1800], P = 0.043). Governmental/educational and commercial sources supported the majority of websites assessed for sponsorship (21% [31/150] and 33% [49/150], respectively), and the former were more likely to rank highly in search results.

CONCLUSION

Online urological information frequently lacks validation and is often of indeterminate credibility. There is a marked decrease in the proportion of accredited websites beyond the highest-ranked results and when considering search categories more relevant to students and less relevant to patients. Students cannot necessarily rely on free online sources for accurate information and could benefit from the development of more rigorous novel tools and platforms.