Medical Students' Attitudes toward Cancer

Abstract

The current experiment was designed to assess whether incoming first-year medical students have more negative attitudes toward cancer patients than toward other patient groups and whether their attitudes vary with respect to patients' prognosis, age, and sex. The relation of attitudes and previous experience with cancer was also of interest. A total of 323 first- and second-year students were administered a description of a patient, with key words changing based on randomly assigned experimental conditions. Five independent variables were manipulated-four characteristics of patients and students' class year-which resulted in a 2x2x2x2x3 factorial design. Evaluative attitudes related to the degree of professional distance that students preferred to maintain with different types of patients were assessed on a six-point Likert scale. Factor analysis of the scale yielded four factors used in the data analysis. Analyses of variance demonstrated students' overall preferences for maintaining greater professional distance from cancer patients than from heart patients and from psychiatric patients than from cancer patients. The analyses also showed that students preferred to maintain greater professional distance from patients with a poor prognosis than from patients with a good prognosis and from male patients than from female patients. After one year of medical school, students perceived cancer patients as easier to manage. Previous experience with cancer was found to be related to an increased desire to work with cancer patients, but it was also found to be related to a perception of cancer patients as more difficult to manage. No student sex differences were observed. The implications of these findings for cancer educators are discussed.