Medical Students and the Level of Their Knowledge on Normal Flora: Results from an Electronic Questionnaire Conducted in a Private Medical School

Introduction: So far, study on medical student’s knowledge regarding human normal flora is not available in the internet. Normal flora is initially beneficial for their host, but what was once part of the normal flora can later become dangerous to their host, e.g become the agent of endogenous disease. The knowledge regarding normal flora is important for medical students, because it related with many aspects of their recent and future education and trainings, especially in the clinical phase. The aim of this simple cross sectional, questionnaire based study is to measure the level of knowledge regarding normal flora.

Study Design: Cross sectional, electronic questionnaire-based survey

Place and Duration of Study: Faculty of Medicine, Universitas Kristen Indonesia, Jakarta, Indonesia and conducted for 1 month (March 2021).

Methodology: The questionnaire is divided into two parts, the demographic section and the knowledge section that consist 20 question regarding normal flora. By using popular social media, WhatsApp™, survey conducted to all of our medical students.

Results: 628 students responded, and they were representing the class of 2014-2020, 190 male students and 438 females with mean age 20.16 years old (min. 16 and max 25). The result showed us that the level of knowledge is good and but the level of understanding regarding normal flora also gets better as they become senior students.

Conclusion: The level of knowledge of our students regarding normal flora is good, although it still needs to be improved continuously.