Effects of Hand Orientation on the Performance in the Presence of Systemic Disease in a College Student

Abstract

Bach ground: Hand preferences is the natural or biological preferences for using one hand over the other in performing special tasks depending on which hemisphere  dominant for the tasks (rice 1998), so it has various effects on one's abilities and behaviors .

Objective: Is to compare the final score of sixth year students in faculty of medicine in Basra University between left handed and right handed group.

Method: I invite all sixth  year students at Basra college of medicine, university of Basra, Southern Iraq, in the academic year (2010-2011)  to participate in this study and questioner sheets distributed for them to answer  question prepared by researcher(attached).Ninety two participate able to fill the sheet presented. Fifty (54.3%) were female and Forty two (45.7%) were male. Thirteen (14.1%) students were left and Ninety seven (58.9%) students were right handed.

Results: Left Handed group in comparison with right hand group  showed higher scoring in cumulative result of the final result in academic performance which is statically significant  with p. value (0.013).Systemic disease that run in group again is more in left handed group in comparison with right handed group, P.Value ( 0.01).

Conclusion: left handedness is associated with more performance regarding the cumulative score of final result in medical students in spite of their relatively increase incidence of systemic disease.