Attitude of Medical Students in Boushehr University of Medical Sciences towards Psychiatry as A Course and A Future Career

There is a dearth of literature in the Iranian context about medical student's attitude to­wards psychiatry and their desire to choose psychiatry as a career in future. Commonalities and differences in the attitude of male and female medical student's attitudes towards psychiatry and their interest in psychiatry were the theme of this study. In this cross-sectional survey, we screened the entire 220 medical students registered at Booshehr University of Medical Sciences, Iran, during the academic year of 2011-12. The 29-item attitude towards psychiatry scale (ATP-30) by Burra et al. was used for assessments. A Cronbach's alpha of 0.07 confirmed the reliability of the scale. About 67% of the students (n = 148), including 82 pre-clinical, 38 clinical, and 28 internship students, showed their cooperation by returning the completed questionnaires. We used SPSS16 to process the data by running descriptive and analytical tests including student-t test, one way analysis of variance (ANOVA) along with Tukey's post hoc test, and linear regression. Female students at the pre-clinical and internship levels and male students at clinical level held more positive attitude toward psychiatry as compared to their counterparts at each level. Students at the pre-clinical level followed by those at clinical and internship levels showed more interest in persuading psychiatry as a career. Among all six sub-scales of ATP-30, "overall merits of psychiatry", "efficacy of psychiatry", "role defini­tion and functioning of psychiatrists" and "career and personal rewards" turn out as the significant predictors of student's interest in psychiatry, yielding an R square value of 0.32. Gender differences play a key role in formulating medical student's attitude towards psy­chiatry. However, they are subjected to a galaxy of social, familial, economic and situational considerations. Assessment of candidate's attitude towards psychiatry at the time of admission and preference for female candidates is imperative.