Awareness about Nanotechnology among Upcoming Clinicians in Vidarbha, Maharashtra

The making of new things at an incredibly small “nano” scale (100,000 times smaller than the human hair) is called nanotechnology and it is one of the most exciting and fast-moving technology in today’s world. Scientists and engineers have been working hard to make the maximum utilization of this knowledge towards applications like cure for certain diseases, to create certain renewable sources of energy and to bring human race safety into next millennium, thus nanomedicine being one of the most important evolution of nanotechnology.

In this research, we have done a cross sectional observation, knowledge, perception and attitude study among 56 residents of various clinical departments of Datta Meghe Medical College. According to our survey, it was evident that only 48.21% of the residents were aware of the science of nanotechnology. Television was the source for most of them to know about it. Approximately 35.71% knew the size of nanoparticles which is really low. Of all the residence who knew about nanotechnology, most of the (42.86%) them knew about its application in healthcare whereas comparatively less (28.57%) were aware of its applications in areas besides healthcare. As expected very few (14.29%) had practically used this advanced science in health care. And hardly any knew about limitations or long-term side effects of nanotechnology in health care but most of them supported it.

With our limited analysis and discussion, we could conclude that awareness and knowledge about nanotechnology among residents who are our upcoming clinicians, was deficient in more than half of them and inadequate among those who had. Universities need to add this subject in their curriculums and have an interdisplinary approach towards this recent advance so that all the medical students and upcoming clinicians have awareness and adequate knowledge regarding nanotechnology & nanomedicine which is going to be the future of medicine having significant impact on our health, comfort and lifestyle.