Perception of Medical Professionals from Tertiary Care Teaching Institutes towards the Specialty of Community Medicine and its Specialists amid the COVID-19 Pandemic

Background: Community Medicine specialists play a crucial role in the prevention and control of communicable and non-communicable diseases, monitoring and surveillance, healthcare planning and management and research but the awareness about the speciality even among the medical fraternity is limited. Aim: To determine the perceptions of Medical Professionals from Tertiary care teaching institutes towards the specialty of community medicine and its specialists. Materials and Methods: This was a web based cross-sectional survey conducted in October- November, 2021 among Medical professionals of Tertiary Care Teaching Institutes in the state of Uttar Pradesh, North India using a semi structured, pretested questionnaire circulated as google forms using WhatsApp and personal email ids. Results: A total 406 participants consented and completed the survey questionnaire out of the 456 contacted eligible individuals (response rate 89.04%) of which 231 (57.0%) were males and 175 (43.0%) were females. Majority (83.0%) of the participants agreed that the ‘information and knowledge gained in Community Medicine by them would certainly help in their future medical practice” and an overwhelmingly majority (91.1%) agreed to the statement that ‘a physician can’t effectively control most infectious disease without adequate knowledge of Epidemiology’. Around 70% of the participants agreed that Community Medicine Specialists have good work life balance and 87.4% agreed that speciality of Community Medicine offers adequate scholarly and research opportunities. Further, 77.6% of the participants agreed that Community Medicine has enough opportunities for direct public contact compared to other specialty and around 64% agreed that the speciality offers the opportunity to utilize newer technologies, Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning. Around 61% of the participants agreed that COVID-19 pandemic will affect the choice of specialty among the PG aspirants. Conclusion: Majority of the Medical professionals have positive perceptions towards the speciality of Community Medicine and its specialists. The COVID-19 pandemic may be an important cause for the changing perception towards the speciality among the medical fraternity.