How medical students in their pre-clinical year perceive psychiatry as a career: the study from Belgrade.
BACKGROUND
Taking the Initiative to evaluate students' affinity toward psychiatry seems to be a global issue and is an essential part of programs to improve the status of the profession. The aim of this study is to explore medical students' attitudes toward psychiatry in comparison to other residencies (internal medicine, surgery, pediatrics, gynecology and general medicine) in the pre-clinical year and to observe which factors influence the creation of these attitudes.


METHODS
The survey included 114 students of the second year, School of Medicine in Belgrade (academic year 2007/08). The data was collected trough a 23-item questionnaire.


RESULTS
Fifteen percent of students stated that psychiatry was their career of choice, while 25% expressed a strong aversion. Psychiatry was ranked less attractive than internal medicine, surgery and pediatrics, but more attractive than general medicine or gynecology. Those who like psychiatry attributed more importance to an interesting and challenging job than to prestige and financial reward. Also, they found this field to be intellectually challenging and to rapidly expand the frontier of medicine. Students with negative attitude were convinced that psychiatry was lacking in scientific foundation and was clinically inefficient, they disliked intensive emotional involvement, exposure to stress and frequent unpleasant situations and had prejudices toward the patients or simply a lack of the interest.


CONCLUSIONS
The present study is the first of its kind in Serbia which used a precise and internationally comparable methodological instrument and It shows that pre-clinical medical students at the University of Belgrade, have a stronger affinity towards psychiatry when compared to their peers from most countries worldwide. Also, the study points out the fact that prejudices toward patients with mental dysfunctions and lack of confidence in the efficacy of psychiatric treatment should be specially targeted by the curriculum in the later part of undergraduate education. How this will affect the attitude of clinical students and graduates is to be examined.
Marić
Nadja P
NP
Institute of Psychiatry, Clinical Centre of Serbia, Pasterova 2, 11000 Belgrade, Serbia. nadjamaric@yahoo.com
Stojiljković
Dragan J
DJ
Milekić
Bojana
B
Milanov
Marko
M
Stevanović
Darko
D
Jasović-Gasić
Miroslava
M
D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002321:Career Choice; D005260:Female; D013502:General Surgery / Q000193:education; D006801:Humans; D007388:Internal Medicine / Q000193:education; D007396:Internship and Residency; D008297:Male; D010372:Pediatrics / Q000193:education; D011570:Psychiatry / Q000193:education*; D055771:Serbia; D013337:Students, Medical / Q000523:psychology*; D055815:Young Adult