Comparison Of Attitudes Of Pre-clinical And Clinical Medical StudentsTo Psychiatry As a Career Choice: a Cross Sectional Study

Abstract

Background

Psychiatry recruitment is currently insufficient to meet the targeted mentalhealth service needs in the UK. Psychiatry is unpopular amongst medicalstudents and in 2011, only 61% of junior training posts were filled by thefirst recruitment. RCPsych is currently working to promote psychiatry as acareer choice for medical students.

Aims

To compare preclinical and clinical medical students’ attitudestowards psychiatry as a career choice.

Methods

A cross-sectional survey of 212 clinical students (CS) and pre-clinicalstudents (PS) at Newcastle University. Each student responded anonymously toan electronic questionnaire. The responses take the form of: Yes/No, freetext, order of preference, and Likert scale. Results were analysed based onbasic statistical analysis.

Results

A total of 29% PS rated psychiatry in their top 3 career choices comparedwith 16% CS. Fifty-seven percent PS believe that psychiatry is a respectedbranch of medicine and 70% believes it makes good use of medical training,while CS rated these at 50% and 52% respectively. Sixty-nine percent PSbelieve that psychiatry is scientific evidence based compared with 63% CS.Eighty-one percent PS disagreed with the statement that they feel negativeabout psychiatry compared with 61% CS.

Conclusions

The outcome shows increase in negative attitude to psychiatry betweenpre-clinical and clinical years at the medical school. This makes psychiatryan unpopular speciality among final year students. Further research isrequired to ascertain the reason for this decline in interest and negativeattitude.

Disclosure of interest

The authors have not supplied their declaration of competing interest.