Changes of Students’ Attitude towards Patients with Chronic Conditions during Medical Education: Comparing Addiction, Dementia, and Diabetes

Medical students’ attitudes towards patients with addiction and towards other chronic conditions might be comparable. Positive attitudes towards such conditions can be developed during medical education. This study evaluated medical students’ attitudes towards patients with addiction, dementia, and diabetes, and how such attitudes change during training. This is an observational prospective cohort study. Participants (N = 100) were students who recruited from Primary and Community Care training, which consisted of theoretical courses and a clinical rotation. The Medical Condition Regard Scale was used to measure the attitudes and a repeated-measures analysis was performed to compare them. Before training, students’ attitudes towards patients with addiction were more negative than towards dementia and diabetes. The attitudes towards addiction remained stable during the entire training, whereas the attitudes towards dementia and diabetes remained stable during the theoretical courses but decreased after the clinical rotation. These findings emphasize a need to pay attention to students’ attitude development towards patients with chronic diseases, addiction in particular, during medical training.