FACTORS THAT DETERMINE MEDICAL STUDENT INTEREST IN PSYCHIATRY

Our study of premedical and medical students attending the Universities of British Columbia, Hong Kong and Otago, together with house surgeons, general practitioners, surgeons and psychiatrists in New Zealand, demonstrated many agreements regarding both positive and negative factors affecting their interest in psychiatry. Positive factors included: interest in human behaviour, personal aptitude, and quality of patient care. Negative factors included: the stress of practising psychiatry, faculty attitude and the quality of the science. Differences were determined by age of the students and cultural and personal experiences. We concluded that if more students are to be interested in psychiatry then psychiatrists will need to show that they enjoy their work and give effective treatment. Australian and New Zealand Journal of Psychiatry 1990; 24:65-76 Although the picture may be changing somewhat, for many years there have been insufficient psychiatrists or physicians interested in psychiatric problems. This has prompted a number of studies to determine what factors contribute to medical student and physician interest in psychiatry. Walton [ l] emphasized that there were four per-sonality attributes that may determine an interest in psychiatry: 1. Personal warmth and the capacity to establish personal relationships; 2. Emotional stability; 3. The ability to tolerate ambiguity