Attitudes towards social issues in medicine of five health science faculties

Abstract

A Likert-type instrument (ATSIM) was developed to assess attitudes toward social issues in health care. The seven scales were Social Factors, Doctor-Patient Relations, Paramedical Cooperation, Preventive Medicine, Government Role, General Liberalism and Social Desirability. This instrument was administered to 750 students in dentistry, medicine, nursing (undergraduate and postgraduate), pharmacy and social work. Univariate analyses comparing medicine to each of the other groups showed significantly higher scores for nursing and social work than for medicine on almost all the ATSIM scales; medicine differed from dentistry on only one scale, and from pharmacy on three scales. Multivariate analyses showed that nursing and social work groups had similar attitudes, while dentistry, medicine and pharmacy formed a separate cluster, and scored lower, mainly with respect to attitudes toward Doctor-Patient Relations, Paramedical Cooperation, Preventive Medicine, Government Role and General Liberalism. All three student groups for whom data were collected in each year of their program (social work, nursing undergraduates, nursing postgraduates) showed a pattern of increasing ATSIM scores over their stay at university; this contrasts with other studies of medical and dental students, which have shown a deterioration in such attitudes. The ATSIM scales appeared to be sensitive to differences among different health science faculties, as well as to intrafaculty differences among course years.