Ownership of computers and abilities for their use in a sample of Chilean medical students

Abstract

Computer skills are valuable assets for medical students. A survey was conducted among the 283 students of the University of Chile Medical School at the East Campus and 90% answered the survey. Of these, 75% own a computer at home; 4% declared not to have access to computers at all. The proportion of students that declared having the computer skills that were included in the survey were: word processing (94%), Medline search on the Internet (52%), spreadsheet (48%), and email (43%). A significantly larger proportion of male medical students rated themselves as able to perform Medline searches and communicate via email. Ownership of a computer is related to better abilities. There is a need to improve the computer use skills of our medical students.