ArticleBMC medical education2020
Medical student volunteerism and interest in working with underserved and vulnerable populations.
Article in BMC medical education, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
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Who cites it
7 citing papers in PubMed, 24 citations in OpenAlex.
- "We will get to…assist the staff of the hospital": comparatively exploring the motivations of pre-medical and medical students from Global North countries for seeking to participate in Ghanaian medical missions.BMC health services research · 2026Article
- Exploring factors associated with clinical competence among nursing students volunteering in Indigenous communities: a cross-sectional analysis.BMC nursing · 2025Article
- Exploration and practice of humanistic education for medical students based on volunteerism.Medical education online · 2023Review
- Implementation of an educational intervention to improve medical student cost awareness: a prospective cohort study.BMC medical education · 2023Article
- Programs to encourage working as a general practitioner in rural areas: why do medical students not want to participate? A cross-sectional study.BMC medical education · 2022Article
- Service-Learning Programs and Projects for Medical Students Engaged With the Community.Cureus · 2022Article
- Demographics, clinical interests, and ophthalmology skills confidence of medical student volunteers and non-volunteers in an extracurricular community vision screening service-learning program.BMC medical education · 2022Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
1 author at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
backgroundThe desire of medical students to eventually work with underserved and vulnerable populations (hereafter 'service interest'), has been shown to be shaped by individual factors including job satisfaction and financial considerations. School-level factors such as required longitudinal primary care experiences and the availability of extracurricular opportunities to work with underserved patients also affect service interest, but little is known about the impact of student volunteer activities.
methodsThis cross-sectional study gathered data from preclinical medical students via an online questionnaire. The data were linked to academic records, deidentified, and analysed using an ordinal logistic regression model with interest in caring 'primarily for underserved or vulnerable populations' as the outcome variable.
resultsOf 121 respondents (33% response rate), 24.8% expressed a definite interest, 55.3% expressed possible interest, and 19.9% expressed no service interest. Intent to work with the underserved was not related to age, sex, race/ethnicity, being from a rural hometown, academic qualifications prior to medical school, or anticipated debt at medical school graduation. Students with no service interest had a higher average academic performance in medical school and plans of subspecialising. When considering volunteerism prior to medical school, students in the highest and middle volunteerism tertiles had 5.68 (95% CI: 1.63, 19.81) and 4.34 (1.32, 14.32) times the odds, respectively, of having definite or possible service interest relative to those who were in the lowest volunteerism tertile, after adjusting for potential confounders. Volunteerism in a student-run clinic for the underserved during medical school was not correlated with service interest.
conclusionsMedical schools looking to enroll more students interested in working with underserved or vulnerable populations may choose to emphasise applicant premedical volunteerism record in their admissions decisions.
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Registered trials
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