Identifying research obstacles; a cross sectional comparative study of perceptions of postgraduate medical and dental residents in three public sector medical colleges.

OBJECTIVE: To explore the attitude of postgraduate medical and dental residents about research work and to identify barriers in the way of research activities. METHODOLOGY: The cross-sectional study was conducted from May to July, 2018, at three public-sector medical and dental institutions in Quetta, the capital of Pakistan province of Balochistan, and comprised postgraduate residents. Data was collected using a pre-validated 16 item Likert scale questionnaire. Data was analysed using SPSS 23. RESULTS: Of the 72 subjects, 44(61.1%) were males. The overall mean age was 23.3±4.6 years (range: 28-30 years. The residents demonstrated willingness to conduct clinical research with a mean score of 4.36±0.65. There was no association of attitudes and barriers with socio-demographic and personal characteristics (p>0.05). Deficient lab facilities (p-<0.001), and inaccessibility to electronic and hospital data (p=0.003) were the major factors identified as research barriers. CONCLUSIONS: Barriers to research need to be addressed in designing research curricula to encourage and facilitate meaningful research.

Students' perception about assessment environment of University of Lahore - Dental School: A cross-sectional survey.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the perception of undergraduate dentistry medical students about the assessment environment at their institution. METHODS: The cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted at the University of Lahore, Lahore, Pakistan, from April 2017 to September 2017, and comprised undergraduate dentistry medical students who were asked to complete the Assessment Environment Questionnaire. Students' individual perception scores were calculated and the means of both individual domain and global score were compared in terms of different academic years. SPSS 20 was used for statistical analysis. RESULTS: Of the100 subjects, 50(50%) each were from 1st year and 2nd year. Overall, the students perceived their assessment environment positive yielding a global mean score of 49.84}10.84 out of the maximum 80. Second year students scored significantly higher compared to first year students in all domains except feedback mechanism (p=0.0017), learning and performance (p=0.0014), information on assessment (p=0.0064), and total mean score of 53.5}8.24 compared to 46.12}11.7 (p=0.0004). CONCLUSIONS: The students' perception of the assessment environment was more positive than negative.