Objective   To investigate how well medical students master knowledge about thyroid carcinoma (TC) and thyroid self-examination, and to provide guidance for pre-clinical education and clinical teaching.

    Methods   The survey was based on the eight-year program of clinical medicine in Peking Union Medical College Medical College. Students of the third and fourth grade were defined as preclinical medical students (PMS), and students of the fifth and sixth grade were clinical medical students (CMS). The survey was conducted in March 2020 through online questionnaires.

    Results   A total of 337 questionnaires were distributed and 274 valid responses were collected with 129 from PMS and 145 from CMS. Generally, CMS had better comprehension of TC, including prognosis (97.2% vs. 64.5%, P < 0.001), diagnosis (95.6% vs. 33.1%, P < 0.001) and surgery indications (82.1% vs. 58.1%, P=0.001). There was no significant difference between PMS and CMS on the acquaintance of the risk factors. However, more CMS stated that ≤5% of thyroid nodules might turn malignant (45.5% vs. 6.5%, P < 0.001), and more CMS suggested that people without nodules should receive TC screening tests (62.1% vs. 41.9%, P=0.001). The percentage of thyroid self-examination in CMS was higher than that of PMS (55.8% vs. 11.6%, P < 0.001), but the rate of regular self-examination was lower (19.8%, 16/81).

    Conclusions   Medical education on TC is effective, but CMS tend to be over optimistic about TC, ignore the importance of self-examination, and lack proper awareness of cost-effectiveness in thyroid screening. It is suggested that medical schools should focus more on education of preclinical general health and clinical practices in the future to engage medical students in popularization of health science.