When Contact Is Not Enough: Affecting First Year Medical Students’ Image towards Older Persons

Sasmita Kusumastuti, Esther van Fenema, Eugenie C F Polman- van Stratum, Wilco Achterberg, Jolanda Lindenberg and Rudi G J Westendorp

PLOS ONE, 2017, vol. 12, issue 1, 1-15

Abstract: Context: Many medical schools have initiated care internships to familiarize their students with older persons and to instil a professional attitude. Objective: To examine the impact of care internships on the image that first-year medical students have of older persons and to explore the underlying concepts that may play a role in shaping this image. Design: Survey before and after a two-week compulsory care internship using the Aging Semantic Differential (ASD; 32 adjectives) and the Attitudes toward Old People (AOP; 34 positions) questionnaires. Participants: Before and after a care internship involving interpersonal contact, 252 and 244 first-year medical students at the Leiden University Medical Centre (LUMC) in the academic year 2012–2013 participated. Method: Descriptive statistics, analyses of variance, and principal component analysis were used; clusters of adjectives and positions were reduced into concepts to examine dominant patterns of views. Changes in image were investigated as mean differences of the total and concept scores. Results: Both the ASD and the AOP questionnaires showed a poor general image of older persons that significantly worsened after the care internship (p

Date: 2017
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:plo:pone00:0169977

DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0169977

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