OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the knowledge base of Pontifical Catholic University of Campinas medical students regarding ophthalmic emergencies (OE). METHODS: Cross-sectional survey among first-year and sixth-year medical students based on data collection obtained through a standardized questionnaire containing a self-evaluation test in which the students had to evaluate their knowledge into "good", "average" or "insufficient", and 10 multiple choice questions covering the OE themes. The data were evaluated using measures of central tendency and Student's T test for assessing the continous variables and the Chi-square test for the categorical variables using the GraphPad InStat software. RESULTS: Seventy first-year medical students (77.7%) with an average age of 20.9 years and 49 sixth-year medical students (54.4%) with an average age of 24.9 years were interviewed. The majority of first-year medical students (83.1%) considered their knowledge "insufficient" and, the majority of sixth-year medical students (43.2%) classified their knowledge as "average" (p=0.0001). In the multiple choice questions, the first-year medical students obtained an average grade of 5.5 and the sixth-year medical students, 6.3 (p=0.0065), thus the average grade obtained by both graduation levels was equal to 5.9. CONCLUSION: The study found deficiencies in knowledge about OE. The results of this study will be used by the Ophthalmology Study Group for planning effective strategies for better teaching ophthalmology.
Evaluation; Health knowledge, attitudes, practice; Students, medical; Education, medical; Ophthalmology; Emergencies; Questionnaires
