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Research Article

Factors that influence the choice of psychiatry as a career by medical students at the School of Medicine, College of Health Sciences, University of Nairobi

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Pages 406-412 | Received 15 Apr 2013, Accepted 04 Jul 2013, Published online: 13 Sep 2013
 

Abstract

The aim of this paper is to assess the particular factors facilitating and those hampering the choice of psychiatry as a career by medical students at the University of Nairobi in a cross-sectional population study of medical students at the University of Nairobi, College of Health Sciences, School of Medicine using self-administered questionnaires. A total of 31 students (13%) said they would like to be psychiatrists while 44 (18%) were neutral and 170 (69%) did not want to become psychiatrists. The factors that made psychiatry interesting for the students included the view that the problems presented by psychiatric patients were often particularly interesting and challenging and the fact that mental illness presented the field of medicine with one of the greatest challenges. Discouraging factors articulated by the students included views that psychiatry was a vague and speculative speciality, psychiatry was not an important part of the curriculum in medical schools, and psychiatric patients tend to make more emotional demands on their doctors than other patients. There was a negative view of psychiatric patients who most of the students thought were strange, dangerous and incurable, although they were curious to know more about them. Most of the negative influence in psychiatry is due to the misconceptions that students have about its prestige and scope, the rewards it offers in terms of job satisfaction and opportunities and the negative views towards psychiatric patients. Integration of psychiatry into the curriculum may address these misunderstandings.

Acknowledgement

Our sincere gratitude goes to the Africa Mental Health foundation for providing research support. We also thank the Principal of the College of Health Sciences, University of Nairobi, for granting us permission to collect data, the students who participated in the study, the Royal College of Psychiatrists for their input, and Dinesh Bughra of the Institute of Psychiatry, London.

Declaration of interest: The authors report no conflict of interest. The authors are alone responsible for the content and writing of the paper.

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