Experience, attitudes and perceptions towards scientific research in medical students in the context of a curricular strategy for training research skills

Introduction: The strategies to generate scientific competencies in physicians can be curricular or extracurricular, compulsory or elective. The objective was to describe the trend of attitudes towards research, motivations and perceived barriers to research, and research experiences among medical students in the context of a compulsory strategy curriculum based. Methods: We conducted a cross-sectional study using an online survey. The strategy has two components; “research-oriented teaching” and "research-based teaching", which are implemented in all the years of the undergraduate degree. The attitudes towards research (17 items), motivations (7 items) and perceived barriers (11 items) to research were measured on a Likert scale, while the experience was measured with the number of research projects and the participation in research activities measured dichotomously. We evaluated the proportions trend over the years of study with a Chi-square test for trend and the number of research projects with a Kruskal-Wallis test. Results: We enrolled 311 students, there was an increase in the number of research projects according to year of study (H = 152.4; p < 0.001). The proportion of authorship of original articles increased from 6.0% in the fourth year to 36.4% in the sixth year (p = 0.001). The percentage agreeing with “the teaching of research methodology should be part of the curriculum” increased from 69.0% in the first year to 100.0% in the sixth (p < 0.01). Conclusion: Our mandatory curricular generated positives changes in participation in research projects and their related activities, mainly in the formulation of research protocols, as well as in the performed and publication of their research results.