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Background: The COVID-19 pandemic shook the world, claimed a lot of lives, incapacitated many, and forced majority of the world into a lockdown. Vaccination is the key strategy to tackling the virus. Objectives: To ascertain the level of vaccination and the difficulties associated with vaccination, among clinical medical students in Enugu, South-East Nigeria. Materials and Methods: A multistage sampling was used to select 160 respondents while questionnaires (hard and soft copy) were administered to the participants. The IBM Statistical Package for the Social Sciences was used for data entry and data analysis. Results: There was a poor (16.3%) knowledge, negative perception (66.3%), and poor uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine (20.6%). There were statistically significant relationships between vaccination status, knowledge of vaccine, age, and perception of the vaccine (P = 0.000) as well as between level of training and vaccine perception (P = 0.03). Conclusion: There was very low level of COVID-19 vaccination in the study population that may be attributable to the low knowledge of the vaccine and the high negative perception. The rush to development of the vaccine, possible side effects, and possible long-term complications may be contributory to the poor uptake of the COVID-19 vaccine among the study respondents.

Background: The importance of radiology in this era of evidence-based medicine cannot be disputed. This has resulted in the increase in demand for radiologists. Thus, the issue of whether there would be sufficient numbers of medical students to meet this growing demand needs further probing. Purpose: To assess Ghanaian clinical medical students’ perceptions about a career in radiology. Materials and methods: This was an online questionnaire-based survey of 575 clinical medical students in five public medical schools in Ghana from September 2020 to February 2021. Student's t-test and one way analysis of variance was used to compare means. For the Likert scale questions, differences in the mean Likert scale responses were assessed among various clinical year groups and across gender using Kruskal-Wallis test and Mann–Whitney U tests. A logistic regression was used to determine the significant predictors of the choice of radiology as a career. Results: Most 340 (59.1%) of the participants were males. The average age of participants was 24.64 ± 3.084 years. Students agreed that, radiology is relevant in this era of evidence-based medicine (mean Likert score = 4.62, SD = 0.819), which yielded significant responses in the third clinical year (p = 0.004). Nearly 30% of respondents stated they did not receive enough didactic lectures or tutorials in radiology, citing insufficient lectures (89.9%), a lack of lecturers (9.5%), and trouble grasping ideas (0.7%) as their main concerns. 133 (23.1%) stated they would choose radiology as a specialty, with flexible working schedule (61.9%) and high income (68.3%) as their topmost reasons. Less patient contact (8.0%) was the least observed reason. A flexible working schedule increased the choice of radiology as a specialty by 2.319 folds (95% CI: 1.413–3.805, P = 0.001). Teleradiology significantly contributed to the choice of radiology as a career (p = 0.001). Conclusion: Generally, the clinical students had varied but positive perceptions on radiology as a specialty.

INTRODUCTION: Acquisition of research experience by medical students is associated with good research pathway at the postgraduate level and also in the pursuit of a research career. Also, it assists the physician to make evidence based decisions in clinical practice. OBJECTIVES: Aim of study was to determine the perception of research and predictors of research career among clinical medical students of Ebonyi State University Abakaliki,southeast Nigeria. METHODS: A descriptive cross sectional study design was used. All clinical medical students of Ebonyi State University who were willing to participate were included in the study. Information was obtained using a self administered questionnaire. RESULTS: A total of235students participated in the study, (response rate, 87.0%) .The mean age was 24.8±2.8 years and majority,61.3% were males. Majority,96.6% were of the opinion that research is important in the practice of Medicine, 66.4% opted for a mandatory research time in medical school and 18.3% agreed that students were encouraged to participate in research. A minor proportion,24.3% have ever participated in research apart from the mandatory student projects and 40.4% intend to pursue a career in research. Barriers to students' involvement in research included lack of funding,43.4%,lack of time,23.8% and lack of mentoring,22.1%.Predictors of research as a career among the students included being a male student, (AOR=2.1;95% CI:1.1-2.8), previous participation in research,(AOR=2.0;95% CI:1.1-5.8),and students that had career guidance,(AOR=3.7;95% CI:2.0-7.0), CONCLUSIONS: Majority of the students have a good perception of research. However only a minor proportion have participated in research and were willing to pursue a career in research. There is the need to encourage and motivate the students towards having interest in health research while also addressing the identified barriers. Career guidance should be institutionalized in our medical schools.