Attitudes of medical student’s in Ireland towards psychiatry revisited: A comparison of students from 1994 with 2010

AIMS We assess and compare; (1) the attitudes of final year medical students in 2010 to their 1994 counterparts, (2) the attitudes of third year medical students with those of their final year colleagues, (3) the impact of two different teaching modules on students attitudes. METHOD All students completing the year 3 psychiatry preclinical module and the final year clinical clerkship were asked to anonymously complete three well validated attitudinal questionnaires on the first and last day of their module in psychiatry. RESULTS These data indicate that Irish medical students have a positive attitude to psychiatry even prior to the start of their clinical training in psychiatry as evidenced by their scores on the ATP-30, SATP and Das and Chandrasena questionnaires. This attitude is significantly more positive now than it was in 1994 (ATP 30: t= 13.4, p< 0.001); ( SATP: t= 6.3, p<0.001). A positive attitudinal change was brought about only by the final year psychiatric clerkship(ATP: t= 10.6, p<0.001); (SATP: t= 8.7835, p<0.001). Those students for whom medicine was not their first degree were less likely to report an interest in psychiatry as a career (r= 0.275, p <0.05). CLINICAL IMPLICATIONS If we are to address the recruitment difficulties in psychiatry we need to look at innovative and specific ways of translating these positive attitudes into careers in psychiatry.