Determining environmental attitudes of medical faculty students and evaluation of environmental behavior
More details
Hide details
1
Department of Public Health, Faculty of Medicine, Eskisehir Osmangazi University, Türkiye
2
Eskisehir Odunpazari District Health Directorate, Eskisehir, Türkiye
Publication date: 2023-04-27
Popul. Med. 2023;5(Supplement):A168
ABSTRACT
Background: Environment is a concept that includes interaction between inanimate components like air, water, soil, and living creatures like human, animals. The environmental pollution due to increased and uncontrolled usage of resources, urbanization, industrialization, nuclear power plants, causes serious threats which include death and diseases. It is aimed to determine the attitudes of medical faculty students towards the environment and to evaluate their environmental behavior (EB). Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on Eskişehir Osmangazi University Faculty of Medicine students. The questionnaire prepared based on the literature was filled out online by the participants. The study group consisted of 874 students who agreed to participate in the survey. The EB scale was used to assess the level of EB. Mann-Whitney U, Kruskal Wallis, and Spearman correlation tests were used for the non-parametric analyses. Results: The ages ranged from 17-35, with a mean of 21.62±2.14. In the study, they were found to have higher scores on the EB Scale; those who are 21 and under, women, member of preclinical classes, those who define themselves environmentally friendly, those who have attended any meeting or received education about environmental awareness and environmental health, those who separate the household waste into groups such as organic/ glass/ plastic, those who isolate the wastes that could be harmful to the environment, those who doesn’t use cars for short range travels, and those who avoided the use of disposable materials. A moderate positive correlation was found between the scores of EB scale and items about environmental attitudes (r=0.616; p<0.001). Conclusions: In order to achieve sustainability in terms of a clean and healthy environment, one of the most important goals is to increase the awareness of university students. Therefore, in order to improve EB, it is recommended to add special lectures to increase environmental awareness in undergraduate education.