Australian medical students' attitudes towards specialties and specialists

Two hundred and thirteen medical students in their first five years of study at the Flinders University of South Australia completed a 50-item questionnaire studying their beliefs and attitudes towards the specialties and the specialists involved in hospital medicine, surgery, paediatrics, obstetrics and gynaecology, and psychiatry. Four factors were identified that appeared to be of particular importance to the students. These were labelled, "scientific/treatment effective", "patient relationships", "usefulness of specialty" and "intellectual/status". Psychiatry consistently stood out from the other four specialties on all four factors, although the Australian students in this study generally appeared more positive towards all five specialties than did their British counterparts whose attitudes have been described elsewhere. Students' beliefs about medical stereotypes appeared relatively constant throughout their first five years of medical training.