Assessment of HIV/AIDS information among preclinical and clinical medical students

Background: The study was investigated the basic and transmission information of medical students towards HIV/AIDS in clinical and preclinical courses, their informational needs and the source of information they usually use for getting information. Methods: This descriptive analytical study was carried out on 220 medical students in preclinical and clinical course, using a stratified random sampling method in 2015-2016. The study instrument was extracted from a WHO questionnaire. Results: The mean age of the subjects was 22.31+2.97 years. Most of them were female 130 (65.7%) and 154 (77.4%) were single. There is no statistically significant difference in basic and transmission information between preclinical and clinical students (22.11+1.66 vs 22.08+1.70, p value=0.91). The most of the students reported that books (85.85%) were their main source of getting information about HIV/AIDS, followed by friendship organizations (32.82%) and then television (29.29%). Most students reported they need more treatment information (59.59%), as well as information on prevention (42.42%) and modes of transmission (39.89%). Conclusion: The present study showed that medical students are knowledgeable about HIV/AIDS but there are some considerable misconception in their basic and transmission knowledge that require more attention and revising in the HIV educational curricula.