Results
The mean age of the studied students was 22.9 ± 0.9 years.
About 96.2% of the students stated that reading is important,
96.2% knew that it has an impact on personality and 92.4%
knew that it affects quality of medical student. There was an
insignificant difference between the two studied years (Table
1).
Nearly half of the students (51.4%) were not convinced
with their reading habit and 67.6% of them tried to change
it; with a significant difference between the two years
(p= 0.015 and 0.044 respectively). Three fourths of students
(75.2%) suspect that their score will improve on changing their
reading habit especially when known that 89.5% have the ability
to develop a better one (Table 2).
The majority of students stated that they had barriers and
difficulties in their college that prevent them from reading
(including unavailability of suitable prepared place for reading,
difficulty to reach the desired material within the library,
unavailability of booking list for each subject and busy schedule),
insufficient time and source barriers (including difficulty
to obtain and language barrier); with a significant difference
between 4th and 5th years (p =0.04, 0.03, 0.002 respectively)
(Figure 1).
The most commonly used medical reference was pocket
books (92.4%), followed by lecture hand outs (88.6%) and
the least one was journal article (26.4%)