A comparative study of attitudes toward psychiatry among nursing students across successive training years

Context: Psychiatry nurses are an integral component of a multidisciplinary mental health-care team. Aim: The current study aimed at understanding the attitude of undergraduate nursing students toward psychiatry. Additionally, the attitudes toward psychiatry have been compared across the training years among these students. Materials and Methods: The study was carried out at a tertiary care nurse-training institute. All the nursing students enrolled with the institute at the time of the study constituted the sample frame. The study questionnaire used in the current study was a 29-item questionnaire that assessed attitudes toward psychiatry. Statistical Analysis: The data were analyzed using SPSS ver 17. Results: Overall, the majority of the nursing students from all four groups had a favorable response to the statements of the Likert scale. Most of the significantly positive responses (as assessed by the Kruskal-Wallis analysis of variance of the rank order) were from the third-year and internship students. These findings were supported by the significant correlation between these statements and ranked order of the nurse-training years. Conclusions: The findings of the current study present some interesting insights into the attitude of nursing students toward psychiatry