Awareness and perception of climate change among medical students in the university college hospital, Ibadan
The importance of being educated on climate change over a period of time usually comes with long lasting impact on the individual. However, there is a low level of perception of the meaning, causes and effects of climate change especially among students. This study was carried out in the University of Ibadan Campus using medical students as respondents to gather data. The students were selected from Medicine and Surgery, Dentistry, Physiology, Nursing, Human Nutrition and Physiotherapy using multistage random sampling. Three hundred copies of questionnaire were administered to the respondents’ asides focus group discussion and analysed using descriptive statistics to present results in frequency and percentages on tables. The result showed the level of awareness among students, the sources of information and impacts of climate change. The students in Medicine Department take courses on climate change (33.7%) more than their counterparts in the college and submitted that climate change help to provide information (85.2%) in certain aspects of their course just like those in Human nutrition (88.2%) agreed. However, Physiotherapy students agreed more on climate change being a means of knowing what is happening in the world (85.7%) than other usefulness. All the students from each department proved that the internet was the best source of information on climate change. The consequential effect of climate change as identified by the students also gave an indication on their perception of climate change. In order to be able to achieve adequate preventive, adaptive and mitigative measures on climate change there is need for better education of these students through inclusion of climate change topics in their curriculum as climate change affects everyone irrespective of discipline, culture or clime.
Keywords: Awareness, climate, education, impact, information
*Correspondence: abosede.kolapo@oouagoiwoye.edu.ng, 08060204863
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