Probing Further Into the Freshman Medical Students’ Attitudes toward “Patient,” ”Doctor-Patient Relation,” and “Psychiatrist”

Abstract

Though our student sample stems from a different cultural background, our results confirm earlier findings of rather “negative” attitudes. “Patient” is perceived as being very different from the students themselves and from medical specialists. A principal component analysis of the semantic differential used to evaluate these attitudes helped to better understand this “negative” view of “patient” and “psychiatrist.” Despite the difficulty of changing attitudes, selection politics taking into account these attitudes would be problematic as no underlying key characteristics such as empathy or dogmatism seemed related to these attitudes upon analysis of their variation.