Knowledge Assessment of Pharmacy and Medical Students towards Alzheimer’s Disease among Geriatric Population

Objective: To assess knowledge of geriatric Alzheimer's Disease (AD) among pre-final and final year pharmacy and medical students.Methodology: A cross sectional study was conducted.A structured questionnaire consisting of 2 sections including Alzheimer's Disease Knowledge Scale (ADKS) was used.Data obtained were analyzed using SPSS Statistics (version 25).Frequency, percentage, mean and standard deviation was used to present sociodemographic data and ADKS score.Difference in ADKS score between different sociodemographic variables was analyzed using independent-sample t-test.ADKS score among respondents was compared using one-way ANOVA test.Association between variables was tested using Pearson Chi-square test.The statistical significance was set at p<0.05.Results: The number of pharmacy and medical students completing the survey was 107 and 104 respectively.Most of the respondents are exposed to AD education but only 35.5% of respondents have experience with AD patients.Students' overall knowledge about AD is poor.The mean ADKS score among respondents is 18.69 ± 2.79.The lowest percentage of correct response is recorded in domain of "Caregiving".No difference in AD knowledge is found among pharmacy and medical students, except for the domain of "Assessment and Diagnosis" (p = 0.011).The findings show an association between exposure to AD education and experience with AD patients with AD knowledge level.Conclusion: Most respondents showed inadequate AD knowledge.The study emphasizes needs to develop AD educational programs and strengthen AD training.