- Nobuyasu Komasawa: Community Medicine Education Promotion Office, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Japan.
- Masanao Yokohira: Department of Medical Education, Faculty of Medicine, Kagawa University, Japan.
This study compared the regional-quota and general-selected medical students' understanding, interest, and confidence in the community medicine practice and their attitudes toward the concept guidelines. We conducted a Web-based questionnaire survey regarding the understanding, interest, and confidence in future community medicine practice and attitudes toward concept guidelines among medical students of all grades (regional-quota and general-selected: n=82 and n=617, respectively). The overall response rates were 68.5% (56/82) and 66.0% (409/617) in the regional-quota and general-selected groups, respectively. Although there was no significant difference between the groups in terms of understanding (=0.998), interest and confidence in future practice were significantly higher in the regional-quota group (both <0.001). There was no significant difference between the two groups for any of the six questions regarding community medicine guidelines. The understanding of community medicine or its conceptual guidelines did not significantly differ between the two groups; however, interest and confidence in future practice were significantly higher in the regional-quota group. These results suggest that the regional-quota system positively upregulates the interest in community medicine, which could be associated with confidence in future practice. Comprehensive and longitudinal improvements in the regional-quota system may be effective in cultivating community medicine.