Knowledge and Awareness of Men’s Health Issues among Undergraduate Medical Students

The morbidity and mortality of men have risen up significantly. But there is a considerable lack of awareness among the community as well as healthcare professionals. This survey was conducted to explore the level of knowledge and awareness towards men’s health issues among undergraduate medical students. A descriptive cross-sectional survey was conducted in 2016 in a private medical school, Malaysia. A cohort of 85 final year medical students who attended the lecture session on non-communicable diseases participated in the survey. A self-administered questionnaire regarding the definition of men’s health and men’s health issues was completed by the participants. The data were collected and analysed by using Microsoft Excel (2013). Frequency and percentage were calculated for quantitative analysis. Categorisation of codes according to the concepts and emerging themes were used for qualitative analysis. All of the 85 students agreed to take part and returned the completed surveys. The majority of the students (92.95%) had poor knowledge while only 7.05% of the students had good knowledge. None of the participants who responded to the first question correctly answered the definition of men’s health. Regarding three common men’s health issue globally, 183 (88.83%) correct answers were collected while 103 (50.49%) answers were correct for three common men’s health issues in Malaysia. Majority of the participants in this survey were found to have poor knowledge on male health issues. Measures to raise the awareness of men’s health issues among the medical students are crucial to improve the men’s health problems.