Computer and internet use by the undergraduate medical students of Bangladesh

Background: A rising tide of information technology (IT) is sweeping through medical education providing learners with easier and more effective access to a wider variety and greater quantity of information.

Objectives: This descriptive cross sectional survey was done to explore status of computer and internet use by undergraduate medical students of Bangladesh.

Methods: 659 final year MBBS students of randomly selected eight medical colleges of Bangladesh were supplied with a pre tested self-administered questionnaire, seeking information regarding the use of computer and internet, in the period of July 2012 to June 2013.

Results: Majority (52%) of the respondents were female. Almost 90% of the respondents had computer and internet access. 83% had personal computer and almost two third of the sample used computers for more than 3 years. Majority used computer and internet more for non-academic activities like chatting, E mail, entertainment, collection of general information, reading newspaper and etc. The features used for academic purposes were multimedia/power point (61.2%), internet literature search (42.3%), presentations (25.8%), and word processing (23.2%). According to the research findings the most visited sites for academic purposes were Google, Wikipedia, Yahoo, Facebook and YouTube.

Conclusion: It is essential to improve the computer and IT knowledge in academics meanwhile reducing non-academic uses.