Eman E. Ebrahim, Marwa M. Ahmed, Inas T. Abdelhameed, Saeed S. Soliman, Marwa S. Said, Marwa D. Hasan, Heba G. Elnahas, Rasha S. Alkhol, Mai D. Sarhan, Samar Fares, Eman I. Raslan, Radwa M. Elsayed, Eman I Elmeshmeshy, Rehab M. Sabry, Nadia M Tawfik, Hala A Hussein, Asmaa A Sayed
The Egypt’s commitment to universal health coverage has emphasized the growing need for well-trained family physicians. Nonetheless, Family Medicine remains underrated as a career choice for medical students. Therefore, efforts to enhance the perception of the Family Medicine specialty among medical students are a necessity. This study aims to investigate the impact of a training program on house officers’ perceptions of Family Medicine as a specialty and a future career choice. We hypothesized that at the end of the training, participants would have increased knowledge of the Family Medicine specialty. This was a pre/post-test quasi-experimental study conducted in the Family Medicine department, Faculty of Medicine, Cairo University. House officers enrolled in the Family Medicine Training Program from March 2020 to February 2021 were invited to complete anonymous self-report pre/post-questionnaires. A total of 1,170 house officers completed the pre-questionnaire, while 689 completed the post-questionnaire (response rate 58.9%). There was a statistically significant increase between pre/post-questionnaires in the percentage of house officers who reported an increase in their knowledge about Family Medicine (from 86% to 95%, P= 0.000), and in those who reported their intent to choose Family Medicine as a future career (from 23% to 31%, P= 0.001). In conclusion, medical schools in Egypt should provide more Family Medicine training programs that aim to debunk myths and improve knowledge about the specialty.
