IntroductionThe stigma of mental illness has a negative impact on the diagnosis and treatment of these disorders. Considering the high prevalence of mental illness, the attitude of medical specialists toward mental disorders, who are front liners in diagnosing and treating these patients, is critical. Therefore, we examined the attitude of Iranian medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services for patients with mental illness.MethodsWe included 143 residents in the fields that have the most interactions with patients with mental disorders, including internal medicine, surgery, neurology, cardiovascular diseases, and psychiatry. A demographic checklist, as well as the opening minds scale for health care providers stigma assessment questionnaire, was provided, which measures five dimensions of improvement, social responsibility, social distance, exposure, and other (such as risk) in health care providers toward delivering the healthcare services to patients with mental disorders.ResultsThe mean score of stigma for mental illness in medical specialty trainees was 61.36 ± 4.83 out of 100. Psychiatric residents have the least stigmatizing attitude (58.38 ± 3.54), and internal medicine and cardiology residents have the highest score, respectively, (62.96 ± 6.05, 62.45 ± 3.80). As for comparing subscales between specialties, only the social responsibility subscale showed a significant difference, with psychiatry having less stigma toward social responsibility (12.93 ± 2.01) than cardiology (15.09 ± 1.50) trainees.ConclusionThe attitude of medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services for patients with mental illness is not uniform; internal medicine and cardiology residents have more stigmatizing attitude, while psychiatric residents have less stigmatizing attitude. It seems that not every contact could be useful in making a better attitude toward mental illness, but it needs preconditions, like a structured contact that leads to positive outcomes. Anti-stigma interventions are needed to improve the attitude of medical specialty trainees toward providing health care services to patients with mental illness.

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Objective To assess charting, risk assessment and treatment-planning of tooth wear between recently qualified and experienced dentists in general dental practice.Design Service evaluation.Setting Multi-setting evaluation of three mixed NHS/Private general dental practices in North-East London.Methods The clinical notes of new patient examinations on dentate adults presenting from the 1 October 2016 to 31 December 2016 were audited collecting data on tooth wear charting, risk assessment and treatment planning. Data were analysed using descriptives, chi square and logistic regressions in SPSS. Significance was inferred at p <0.05.Results Foundation dentists and experienced dentists performed 85 and 200 new patient examinations, respectively, during the evaluation period. Tooth wear was charted for 48% of those attending foundation dentists and 5% of those attending experienced dentists. Diet was assessed in 50.6% of patients examined by foundation dentists and 1.0% of patients examined by experienced dentists. Foundation dentists were more likely to chart tooth wear, risk assess and preventively manage tooth wear compared to experienced dentists (p <0.001).Conclusion This service evaluation highlights that improvements are required in recording, risk assessing and preventive treatment planning of erosive tooth wear. Experienced dentists were less likely to risk assess tooth wear and less likely to provide preventive treatment. Experienced GDPs may benefit from re-training in this area.

If citing, it is advised that you check and use the publisher's definitive version for pagination, volume/issue, and date of publication details. And where the final published version is provided on the Research Portal, if citing you are again advised to check the publisher's website for any subsequent corrections.

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