A Survey of Medical Students Computer Use skills: The University of Lagos, College of Medicine Experience

It is no gain saying that application of computers in medicine have contributed enormously in the delivery of high quality health care. This to a large extent is fully integrated into the education and healthcare system in developed countries but is yet to be fully utilized in developing countries. Therefore, it is imperative that medical students in Nigeria should learn skills and gain knowledge in the use of computers while in the medical school. This study aimed primarily to assess the awareness and use of computer by the Medical students of the University of Lagos, College of Medicine, in comparison with what exits overseas. The study found that out of 200 respondents, 130 (65%) were aware of the enormous benefits of computer use to both academic and medical practice however; 70 (35%) have never used this facility in the library before. The use of computer among the medical students was largely due to cost of undertaking computer search, irregular training on computer use, insufficient computers that are not networked and inconvenient hours of undertaking computer search. In view of this problem discovered in this research, the following remedies were suggested as follows: The number of personal computers should be increased, the librarians should be involved in the training of medical students on computer use; in other words, efforts should be made to integrate information searching skill programme into the medical school curriculum. NQJHM Vol. 15 (3) 2005: pp. 115-11