Evaluation of COVID-19 Risk Perception and Attitudes About Health Communication of Karadeniz Technical University Faculty of Medicine Students in the COVID-19 Pandemic

The communication of medical students with patients/patient relatives is very important in the diagnosis and treatment of health problems. The better the patient/relatives feel understood in communication, the more positive improvement can be achieved in the treatment process. It is thought that one of the factors affecting students' communication with patients/patient relatives is the COVID-19 pandemic. The aim of this study is to examine medical school students' COVID-19 risk perception levels and their attitudes towards health communication during the pandemic period. 903 students were included. An online survey method was used because it was thought that face-to-face data collection would not be appropriate during the pandemic. The mean COVID-19 risk perception scores of students who had a disease or risk factor related to the respiratory system, who hadn’t had SARS-CoV-2 infection, who followed the daily COVID-19 case table, and who encountered a patient with suspected or confirmed SARS-CoV-2 infection were statistically significantly higher (p values 0.009; 0.041;