Response of undergraduate medical students to SARS.

During last year’s SARS epidemic where Malaysia was spared, we conducted a questionnaire study on medical students of a private medical university in Malaysia in order to better understand their responses to the SARS epidemic, particularly in the face of uninterrupted ward teaching in Seremban Hospital a government designated SARS hospital where potential SARS cases referred from other healthcare institutions in the state were assessed. This two-week study (between 12 to 23 May, 2003) was carried out into the third week after Malaysia reported its first SARS-related death patient, and compared the levels of knowledge and anxiety between junior (Phase I) and senior (Phase II) students. The medical curriculum of this university requires that the students be exposed to hospital bedside teaching from first year (Phase I), and the degree of such exposure increases exponentially from the third year (Phase II) onwards.