Generational increase in medical students' perspective of medical knowledge as a source of entrepreneurship with the intervention of medical entrepreneurship courses at Lagos State University College of Medicine (LASUCOM), Ikeja, Lagos, Nigeria

Abstract

Background: Medical entrepreneurships can shift part of health care delivery burden from governments to the private sector. In LASUCOM, we started courses to prepare students for optional private sector service: ENT 202, Introduction to Medical Entrepreneurship, is done in the second year and ENT 302, Practical Medical Entrepreneurship, is done in the third year in medical school. The first students to take ENT 202 are now in their fifth year.

Objectives: This investigation is to determine if the educational intervention influenced the students' perspectives of the role of medical knowledge in entrepreneurship.

Methods: Students, unprepared, responded impromptu and individually to a questionnaire survey all at the same time without crosstalk within ten minutes. They selected one answer from four choices of: “irrelevant”, “quite relevant”, “very relevant”, “very relevant and important” for questions on “turning knowledge into profit”, “entrepreneurship in personal development”, and “entrepreneurship in national development”.

Results: Data revealed no Gaussian distribution and an exponential increase in answers from “irrelevant” to “very relevant and important” for “turning knowledge into profit” in all classes of students. The Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, r, between 5^th and 4^th year students = 0.978; between 5^th and 3^rd year students = 0.921; between 5^th and 2^nd year students = 0.59. The generational increase in appreciation of entrepreneurship was also obtained for “entrepreneurship in personal development” but not for “entrepreneurship in national development”.

Conclusion: Educational intervention with entrepreneurship courses is associated with generational increase in perspective of the relevance of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Medical entrepreneurship, educational intervention, doctors’ strikes, tertiary institutions