The role of clinical medical students in the scarce of healthcare workers during covid-19 pandemic.

Objectives: In the pandemic with the scarcity of medical workers dealing with COVID-19, a social distancing policy has implied on delayed clinical rotations among clinical medical students in Indonesia. This situation needs to be further analyzed as clinical medical students can potentially be empowered to back up professional health workers on duty. This study aims at investigating perception and potential contributions of clinical medical students in coping with the COVID-19 pandemic under limited human resources. Methods: Web-based cross-sectional study using an online survey Results: From 1 to 5-rating point, the average scores of level of knowledge (LoK) about COVID-19 symptoms, prevention, and personal protective equipment were 3.86, 3.96, and 3.98, respectively. LoK about prevention was moderately-strong correlated with the interest of the students in providing preventive education (r=0,499, p<0,001). A similar correlation was found between LoK about symptoms and the interest in education about severity (r=0,424, p<0,001). However, LoK about Personal Protective Equipments (PPE) had a weak correlation with the interest in helping in case a complete PPE is available (r=0,168, p=0,001). Conclusions: From the data, we found that the clinical medical students have a fairly to very good level of knowledge about symptoms, prevention, and PPE. The clinical medical students have relatively strong interest to help the medical workers provide health services during the pandemic if proper PPE is available. © 2020 Elsevier B.V., All rights reserved.