A multi-center cross-sectional study examining neurophobia among the Egyptian medical students

Neurophobia is the fear of neurosciences and clinical neurology, which is probably due to the students' inability to apply their knowledge of basic sciences to clinical situations. While the burden of neurological diseases increases, it is important to combat the phenomenon of neurophobia. This is the first multicenter cross-sectional online study of Egyptian students exploring their attitudes towards neurology and neuroscience, carried out in September and October 2024. A total of 434 medical students who had studied clinical neurology participated in the present study. Likert-scale questions (1-5) were utilized, and data analysis was performed using R Statistical Software (version 4.3.2; R Core Team, 2023). Out of the 434 participants, 240 (55%) were males, and the median age of participants (IQR) was 22 (22, 23) years. We found a neurophobia prevalence of 35.7%; nevertheless, when calculating the same phobia score for other specialties, we found that neurology ranked second only to cardiology with a prevalence of 36.6%. In terms of interest, the mean score (SD) for neurology was 3.41 (1.26), ranked second to endocrinology at 3.47 (1.20) and followed by cardiology at 3.34 (1.29) with a p-value of (0.4737, 0.4247) respectively. The main reasons for neurophobia were trouble with neuroanatomy (49.5%), trouble with basic neuroscience (28.6%), lack of curative treatments or poor prognosis (28.1%), and poor teaching (17.1%). Students perceived working as a neurologist to be more challenging than other specialties, with a score of 3.60 (0.88) out of a 1-5 scale. The current study provided suggestions to combat neurophobia.