A comparative study of attitudes toward psychiatry among nursing students across successive training years.
BACKGROUND
Psychiatry nurses are an integral component of a multidisciplinary mental health-care team.


OBJECTIVE
The current study aimed at understanding the attitude of undergraduate nursing students toward psychiatry. Additionally, the attitudes toward psychiatry have been compared across the training years among these students.


METHODS
The study was carried out at a tertiary care nurse-training institute. All the nursing students enrolled with the institute at the time of the study constituted the sample frame. The study questionnaire used in the current study was a 29-item questionnaire that assessed attitudes toward psychiatry.


METHODS
The data were analyzed using SPSS ver 17.


RESULTS
Overall, the majority of the nursing students from all four groups had a favorable response to the statements of the Likert scale. Most of the significantly positive responses (as assessed by the Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance of the rank order) were from the third-year and internship students. These findings were supported by the significant correlation between these statements and ranked order of the nurse-training years.


CONCLUSIONS
The findings of the current study present some interesting insights into the attitude of nursing students toward psychiatry.
Department of Psychiatry and De addiction, Lady Hardinge Medical College and Smt SK Hospital, New Delhi, India.
Yatan Pal Singh
YP
Balhara
Shachi
S
Mathur
Attitude; developing countries; mental health resources; nursing training; psychiatry