EVALUATION OF FACTORS CAUSING ABSENTEEISM FROM LECTURES IN A MEDICAL COLLEGE

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the factors causing absenteeism among undergraduate medical students from lectures in a medical college. METHODS: This cross-sectional study was conducted at Aziz Fatimah Medical & Dental College, Faisalabad, Pakistan during the month of July and August 2017. The participants were the medical students of the three batches (third year, fourth year and final year) of the college. There were 308 students, with more than 50% attendance in the last semester. These students were also attending clinical classes. They were asked to fill the Likert scale based questionnaire. This study was done to find out the factors which influence the students not to attend the lectures in medical college. RESULTS: Out of 308 medical students in three batches, a total of 267 completed the questionnaire; the response rate was 86.6%. Mean age was 21.14±3.4 years. There were 105 (39.3%) male and 162 (60.6%) female students. The two most common reasons for not attending the lectures were preference of self-studying over attending lectures (n=123, 46%) and poor teaching style by lecturers (n=128, 47.9%). CONCLUSION: This study proved that the problem of absenteeism is increasing nowadays in medical students. There are multiple factors of absenteeism including bad construction of the lectures and preferring self-study over taking lectures.