Knowledge, attitudes and exposure of undergraduate medical students at Makerere University to Radiotherapy practice in Uganda

Abstract

The incidence and burden of cancer have drastically increased over the years, and this necessitates the standardization of care for these patients in medical, surgical, and radiation oncology. The advancement in technology has facilitated the rapid growth of radiotherapy, and most patients have been observed to benefit from treatment using radiotherapy. Although the establishment and practice of radiotherapy have been adopted in most High-Income Countries, there is still a gap in the availability, training, and practice of radiotherapy in Uganda, which has led to a very big human resource gap, hence poor cancer outcomes. This study aimed to assess the knowledge, attitudes, and exposure of undergraduate medical students at Makerere University to the radiotherapy practice in Uganda. This was a qualitative study that recruited undergraduate medical students in their clinical years at Makerere University. The data was collected using an interview guide, and responses were captured by recording audio. This recorded data was used to identify themes related to the research question and to develop categories that were used to determine the knowledge, attitudes, and exposure. Results: Through semi-structured interviews with 30 participants, we identified 8 key themes: basic understanding of radiotherapy, source of information about radiotherapy, use of radiotherapy treatment, career interest in radiotherapy, decision making in family care, risk and benefit perception, knowledge of number and location of radiotherapy departments and hands-on exposure to radiotherapy. Using these themes, we discovered that the participants had moderate knowledge levels as they knew most of the basics but lacked clear understanding of the details in radiotherapy, the attitudes were generally poor as they were less likely to pursue radiotherapy careers and recommend it as treatment attributing it to the misconceptions they had about the risks associated with radiotherapy, we also discovered that the exposure was very limited as they could not easily identify the number of departments currently in the country and only one participant had ever observed a radiotherapy procedure. Conclusion: Overall, this study’s participants had a moderate level of knowledge about radiotherapy with a superficial understanding of the modality. Most of the students had a very poor attitude to radiotherapy, combined with almost no clinical exposure to radiotherapy practice. There’s an urgent need to address these gaps by incorporating both theoretical and practical radiotherapy teaching in the undergraduate curriculum and investing in radiotherapy infrastructure to equip students with knowledge at an early stage of their career and motivate them to take on a career in radiotherapy to address the human resource challenges