Attitudes of psychiatry residents toward a strike by nursing staff : a case report

A study of the attitudes of psychiatry residents and attending psychiatrists toward a strike by nurses and mental health workers in a psychiatric teaching hospital was performed. All residents (n = 20) and 47 (83% of the attending psychiatrists) completed a questionnaire within 4 weeks after the strike. The responses to the questionnaire indicated that resident's behavior in response to the strike was significantly different from the behavior of the attendings: 20% of the residents volunteered service during the strike compared with 66% of the attendings (p ≤ 0.0001). The attending psychiatrists, when asked what action they would have taken if they were residents, indicated somewhat less of an inclination to volunteer; 16.7% changed their position about volunteering (NS). When asked what they would have done if they were attendings, 55% (p ≤ 0.008) of the residents indicated they would have volunteered service. The significance of these findings is that residents identify themselves more with the "frontline" mental health workers engaged in the strike than with the faculty/attending psychiatrists who serve as their professional role models.