Intelligence quotient analysis and its association with academic performance of medical students

Abstract

INTRODUCTION In India Since independence, universal and affordable health which is central to the planning of the health system, 1 has been failing due to lack of qualified health care providers specially doctors and nurses. According to census (2001) there are only 3·8 allopathic doctors, and 2·4 nurses and nurse-midwives per 10 000 people. 2 even now we are not in a position to train the adequate number of doctors. The reason may be of lack of infrastructure or long duration of MBBS course or else. Though MBBS is five and half (5+1/2) year's course, but it takes nearly 7 to 8 years for a matriculated student to complete the MBBS degree. The reason has been 2 to 3 years preparation for medical entrance, and time expenses due to failures in MBBS semester exams. To find relation between students IQ and time lapsed by them for medical entrance exam preparation and during actual course due to failures, the study has been conducted. The study interrogated about number of attempts by students for medical entrance, their self study hours, and attempts in semester exams. The basic purpose was to analyse whether inclusion of IQ tests in the medical entrance will be able to reduce the years for getting MBBS degree (by selecting students with higher IQ). Secondly IQ is also of importance to medical students, because they are future physicians and will face complex and novel situations in which a quick, and complex, ABSTRACT Background: Intelligence is the ability to see meaningful relationships between things that includes perceiving, knowing, reasoning and remembering. The study was done to know the duration of preparation, self study hours, academic performance and its association with IQ level of medical students, to state how to shorten the duration of completing MBBS degree. Methods: A cross sectional study done on 300 medical students using structured questionnaire derived from I Q test.com. Data collection and appropriate statistical test were applied considering p value ≤ 0.05 as significant. Results: Most of the medical students had near average intelligence (88.3%) , they undergone one to two years preparation for medical entrance exams and devoted much time (>6 hrs) in studies. 10% of the students had higher IQ, spare less time in their self study but were sincere in the classes. Conclusion: Students with near average IQ work hard in their studies and their academic performance was similar to students with higher IQ. So IQ can`t be made the basis for medical entrance; instead giving weight-age to secondary school results and limiting the number of attempts may shorten the time duration for entry and completion of MBBS degree.