[Self-image, real physician's and ideal physician's image: a comparison of medical students 1981 and 2006].
BACKGROUND
Due to the new licensing regulations for physicians, social and communicative aspects have attained a central position within medical education. In developing self-reflexive, empathetic and communicative skills, medical students are influenced on the one hand by encounters with real physicians in the role of supervisor or colleague, and on the other by their intra-psychic ideals and role stereotypes. The present study aimed to contrast the self-evaluations of modern medical students with their role stereotypes and ideals, and to further relate these to the evaluations, stereotypes and ideals of medical students in 1981.


METHODS
696 medical students were surveyed with respect to their self-image, their image of a physician and their image of the ideal physician using Osgood and Hofstätter's polarity profile.


RESULTS
Over the past 25 years, medical students' image of the ideal physician has remained surprisingly constant, comprising expectations with regard to aptitude, trustworthiness, reliability, friendliness, confidence, thoroughness and congeniality. Encountered physicians were described as negatively deviating from this ideal; self-evaluations lay predominantly in between these two extremes. Self-images were characterized by feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty.


CONCLUSIONS
Medical students possess differentiated images of self, future colleagues and the ideal physician. Surveyed students appeared to develop feelings of powerlessness and uncertainty, as well as tendencies to overestimate themselves within self-evaluations. Dealing with the conflict-charged domain between idealism and realism within the occupational reality toward which medical students aspire thus appears to be complicated. These problem areas, which have so far received little attention, require urgent consideration in the development of future medical curricula, in particular in the psychosocial fields.
Schrauth
Markus
M
Medizinische Klinik und Poliklinik, Abteilung Psychosomatische Medizin und Psychotherapie, Eberhard-Karls-Universität Tübingen.
Kowalski
Axel
A
Weyrich
Peter
P
Begenau
Jutta
J
Werner
Anne
A
Zipfel
Stephan
S
Nikendei
Christoph
C
D000328:Adult; D004504:Education, Medical, Undergraduate; D005260:Female; D006801:Humans; D007400:Interprofessional Relations; D008297:Male; D008875:Middle Aged; D010820:Physicians / Q000523:psychology*; D024382:Professional Role; D012649:Self Concept; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult