Saudi medical student opinion of psychiatry before and after psychiatric clerkship

Abstract EN

Medical student's attitudes have implications for recruitment into psychiatric specialty.

Efforts to increase the number of psychiatrists entail understanding how students perceive psychiatry.

To study the effect of psychiatric training program on the attitudes of undergraduate medical students, one year intake of fourth-year medical students at King Saud University were given an attitude-to-psychiatry questionnaire before and after their training.

After the psychiatric clerkship there was a significant favorable change in the general attitude in both sexes which positively correlated with the intention to specialize in psychiatry.

Intention to specialize in psychiatry increased after the training specially in male students.

However there were some reasons against choosing psychiatry as a future career, reported by a group of students, including perceiving psychiatry as a social stigma, vague and too unscientific specialty.

The implication of these findings are discussed in relation of psychiatric training program in Saudi Arabia