Abstract
It was aimed to determine the level of knowledge of medical school students about COVID-19 disease, to examine some variables that are thought to be related, and to evaluate their behavior about COVID-19 disease. A cross-sectional study conducted on Eskisehir Osmangazi University Faculty of Medicine students between August 1st, 2020 and October 30th, 2020. The study group made up of 984 students. The students' knowledge about COVID-19 disease evaluated with 26 questions and their behavior with 15 questions prepared by the authors. Each correct answer was given “1 point” while incorrect answers were not given points. Mann-Whitney U test and Kruskal Wallis analysis were used. In the study group, 501 (50.9%) were female. Ages ranged from 17-35 with an average of 20.77±2.18 years. The scores of the students from the knowledge questions about COVID-19 disease ranged from 5-25 with an average of 18.82±3.16 points. Knowledge scores for COVID-19 disease were higher in those with a broken family structure, studying in the fourth grade and above, and those who self-reported sufficient knowledge of the disease. In this study, the most correctly answered knowledge question was “those who come into contact with the agent of COVID-19 disease are isolated for 14 days” with 97.4%, while the most incorrectly answered knowledge question was “non-medical fabric masks do not have protection” with 64.8%. The scores of the students from the behavior questions related to COVID-19 disease ranged from 0-15 with an average of 10.00±2.02. The students had a good level of knowledge about COVID-19 disease, there was a positive weak association between levels of knowledge and behavior. It may be useful to conduct more effective informative studies by competent health authorities to increase their knowledge levels. More comprehensive studies are needed to determine the relationship between knowledge levels and behaviors about the disease.