Changes in the attitudes towards psychiatry among Spanish medical students during training in psychiatry

Abstract

Background: To gain an understanding of the process of recruitment, studying changes in attitudes and views towards psychiatry among Spanish medical students during their fourth academic year. Methods: A 33-item questionnaire was administered to 48 medical students before and after having completed training in psychiatry. Comparative data analysis was carried out using the Wilcoxon test. Results: The comparison showed that there was a reduction in the number of students reporting that "psychiatrists abuse their legal power", that "for most specialists in this area, psychiatry was not their preferred choice" and that "those students interested in psychiatry are regarded as odd or peculiar". However, the view that "psychiatry is an expanding frontier of medicine" decreased among the students. The percentage of students considering psychiatry as a future career rose from 4.2% to 10.4% after training. Conclusions: The students' opinions change with the experience of training in psychiatry and become more realistic. Alongside these changes in attitudes, there is an increase in the proportion of students willing to consider psychiatry as a future career, which suggests that there is no reduction in vocations for psychiatry among Spanish students.

Attitudes towards psychiatry of undergraduate medical students at Bayero University, Nigeria

“…8,9 However, having a positive attitude towards psychiatry does not guarantee selection of psychiatry as an area of professional specialisation. 10 Positive experiences during students' clerkship in psychiatry and their personal contact with mental illness increase the likelihood that they will have positive attitudes towards the profession, 11 but because of other deciding factors may well not guarantee an increase in the number wishing to specialise in psychiatry. 11 The competition from other medical departments for curriculum time in medical schools has reduced the duration of medical students' exposure to psychiatry clerkship, [12][13][14] and this not only negatively affects students' acquisition of knowledge in psychiatry but also undermines their understanding of its importance as a field of medicine.…”

Attitudes towards psychiatry among undergraduate medical students

“…9 This trend was partly attributed to the negative attitude of medical students towards psychiatry. 10 ln this context, the present study aimed to determine the attitudes of undergraduate medical students towards psychiatry and related factors.…”

“…This result was consistent with a study conducted in the faculty of medicine of the University at Autonoma de Barcelona, Spain during the academic year 1999/2000. 10 There was a positive change about the social prestige of the discipline after the exposure to psychiatry. Students were inclined to view that psychiatry enjoyed a respectable image among the general public.…”

“…This result was consistent with a Malaysian study 12 and inconsistent with a Nigerian 10 and a Spanish study. 10 With the exposure to psychiatry, students were more inclined to believe that psychiatrists make as money as most doctors. A greater change concerning income prospect was observed before and after exposure to psychiatry.…”

Medical students’ experience and perceptions of their final rotation in psychiatry

“…[8,9] Most other reported surveys among psychiatry students relate to final-year students' attitudes to psychiatry or psychiatric illness, or to psychiatry as a career choice. [10][11][12][13][14][15][16][17] One study conducted among 85 preregistration house officers in Norway had more similar objectives to those of our study, namely getting a sense of the learning benefits and learning environment of a psychiatry rotation. [18] This article reports on the findings of undergraduate medical students' evaluation of the final psychiatry rotation at the University of…”