The role of the Student’s involvement in Global Health Medical Education: the results of a survey conducted in four Medical Schools in Rome

Background The inclusion of Global Health (GH) in the curriculum has several benefits for health professionals: the ability to appreciate diversity, analyze changes and the forces that shape society, together with a broad understanding of health throughout the world are essential skills. As GH is suitable for innovative ways of learning, students evaluation helps to understand their real needs and to improve the quality of GH courses. Methods During 2010-2011 and 2011-2012 academic years, in four Faculties of Medicine in Rome, GH courses were performed: the main modules topics were the same, concerning Health determinants, Globalization, Inequalities, Migration and Health Cooperation. An end-course questionnaire was submitted to medical (MS) and other health professional (OS) students, in order to evaluate 3 items: the overall satisfaction, the utility and the influence of the course on future career. Logistic regressions were performed to assess the role of the typology of degree course (MS or OS) and the students participation in the course organization in the student ‘‘full satisfaction’’. The satisfaction degree assessment was performed by identifying 4 levels based on a score (from 0 to 3) obtained by the questionnaire. The 4 levels were labeled as ‘‘full satisfied’’ (score: 3) versus the other rates of satisfaction (score: 0,1,2). Results Out of 341 students, 273 (80.29%) answered the questionnaire: 204 were MS and 67 OS. The average score of overall satisfaction was 2.45 (SD 0.5) for MD and 2.42 (SD 0.5) for OS. As regard to the three investigated items, only the participation in the course organization is significantly associated with the ‘‘full satisfaction’’. For the overall satisfaction OR 2.74 (CI 1.41-5.34), for the utility of the course OR 5.36 (CI 2.56-11.20), for the influence on future career OR 3.84 (CI 1.98-7.47). No association between the ‘‘full satisfaction’’ and the belonging to the degree courses (MS or OS students) was found (p > 0.05). Conclusions The rating of the student satisfaction shows that the full appreciation depends on the consideration of their needs and their involvement in the course, even if the skills and the topics are settled. Further evaluations could support in the comprehension of other aspects to improve teaching quality.