Barriers perceived by researchers in pursuing medical research in an evolving medical college of tribal Madhya Pradesh, India.

INTRODUCTION

Doing quality medical research that improves patient care, improves medical education, reduces expenditures, and benefits society at large is an important responsibility, though often underrated. Appropriate measures are required to be taken when a medical college is new. Hence, this provided an opportunity to conduct a study at a current medical institution with the aim of identifying the barriers faced by research in various domains.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study included currently working faculties, including senior residents and demonstrators, as subjects. A structured questionnaire with close-ended responses was used, which covered the baseline characteristics of subjects and perceived research barriers among researchers. After obtaining institutional ethical approval, the study was initiated. During the analysis of the data, an association between variables was significant for value < 0.05.

RESULTS

In the present study, out of 105 eligible subjects, only 98 of them participated. The mean age of the subjects was 36.06 ± 6.48 years. The most frequent barriers expressed were a lack of research training facilities to solve individual research problems (45.9%) and a lack of a sufficient financial budget for research activities (57.1%). The organizational-managerial level domain was significantly associated with the subject's age, designation, and gender ( < 0.05).

CONCLUSIONS

The present study identified the barriers faced by the researcher at various levels. Despite the presence of a young workforce, it was surprising to notice that more than half of the faculty members had poor research barrier scores in each of six domains, probably due to a lack of mentorship and acknowledgement, and a lack of skill in using computer-based hardware and software.