Medical Students' Attitude Towards Studying Medicine

Introduction. The attitude of medical students towards their own discipline will have an effective role in major plannings of the government concerning the field of medicine. This study aims to assess students' attitude towards studying medicine, and to determine the relationship between students' attitude and their demographic characteristics. Methods. A cross–sectional descriptive study was done in April 1999. A checklist containing 30 phrases for assessing attitude was distributed among medical students in different years of study. 380 completed questionnaires were collected, then the mean of attitude was calculated based on the grade of attitude for each question using Likert scale. The statistical methods including one way ANOVA and Pearson correlation coefficient were used to compare the correlation between the grade of attitude and demographic characteristics. Results. The mean of students' test grade was 73.78 which was less than the mean of total test grade. There was a significant relationship between students' attitude and their gender, so that the females had a higher degree of attitude than males. Also, the attitude grade decreased with increment of age and years of study. In comparing the students attitude and their marital status and being local or not, no significant relationship was found. Conclusion. It is concluded that about 90% of the students had a mean degree of attitude less than total test grade, suggesting that most of them had a negative attitude towards education. Female students had a more positive attitude comparing to males.