Abstract
PurposeRehabilitation professionals are faced with judging and describing the social-medicine status of their patients. Rehabilitation professionals must know the core concepts of acute unfitness for work, psychological capacities, and long-term work capacity. Acquiring and applying this knowledge, requires training. The research question is if and to what extent medical professionals and students’ knowledge changes after social medicine training.MethodsThis quasi-experimental study was carried out in the real-life context of social medicine training. Psychology students (n = 42), physicians/psychotherapists (i.e. state-licensed health professionals) (n = 44) and medical assistant professionals (n = 29) were trained. Their social medicine knowledge was measured before and after training by a 10-min expert-approved and content valid knowledge questionnaire. Three free-text questions had to be answered on the essential aspects of present and prognostic work ability and psychological capacities. Answers were rated for correctness by two experts. Paired t tests and variance analysis have been calculated for group comparisons.ResultsAll groups improved their social medicine knowledge from the pre- to the post-test. The students started with the lowest level of knowledge in the pre-test. After training, 69% of the physicians/psychotherapists and 56.8% of the medical assistant professionals, but only 7% of the students, obtained maximum scores for naming psychological capacities.ConclusionsSocial medicine knowledge increased after a training course consisting of eight lessons. The increase was greater for medical assistant professionals and physicians/psychotherapists than for students. Social medicine training must be adjusted to the trainee groups’ knowledge levels.
Highlights
Mental health problems are often associated with problems at work [1,2,3,4], poor working ability or even early retirement
The physicians/ psychotherapists and medical assistants have been working with people with mental health problems for M = 8.4 (SD = 7.0) and M = 8.8 (SD = 7.5) years
In comparison to a pre-test, after a social medicine training course consisting of eight lessons
Summary
Mental health problems are often associated with problems at work [1,2,3,4], poor working ability or even early retirement. One major question in social medicine is that of the patient’s work ability. To answer such social medicine questions, occupational health clinicians need to know the following:. Clinicians need to consider the patient’s symptoms, and their psychological capacity level. The diagnosis and description of psychological capacities is a relatively new field in clinical diagnostics, which until now has been unfamiliar to most clinicians. It is necessary for preparing precise social medicine reports and for choosing appropriate interventions
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