Ayesha Sarwat, Mohammad Moazzam Tauheed, Shaheen Sharafat, Sadaf Ahmed.
Attitude Toward Psychiatry among Nursing Students in a Public Sector Nursing School.
J Pak Psych Soc Jan ;17(4):13-9.

OBJECTIVE: To determine the attitude and perception among nursing students about psychiatry in a public sector hospital. STUDY DESIGN: Cross sectional. PLACE AND DURATION OF THE STUDY: The study was conducted from 31 January 2018 to 31 Jan 2019 at Institute of Nursing/DUH in Karachi. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: 236 nursing students were included in the study. A semi structured questionnaire based on attitude to Psychiatry ( ATP) was used for data collection. The nursing students in the different training years were approached after their lectures. The data was analyzed using SPSS V.20. sociodemographic variables were assessed for frequency and percentages. For descriptive analysis, responses on each item of the ATP scale were grouped according to overall responses. The Likert scale scores were compared using Kruskal-Wallis ANOVA of the rank order data. All statistically significant results were reported at p < 0.05. RESULTS: Majority of the sample (70.3 %) were between 16 to 25 years of age and females (58.9%). The graduate nurses were 32.2% followed by 2nd year students (21.6%). Only 19.9% attended lectures on Psychiatry during their study. In ATP majority agreed that the overall merits have increased and psychiatry is a rapidly expanding frontier of medicine. Regarding specific nursing school factors, they agreed that teaching about psychiatry should be part of curriculum; they had interest but were of opinion that no efforts are made to introduce psychiatry to postgraduate level. CONCLUSION: The nursing students consider psychiatry as medical profession with biological bases and their attitude towards psychiatry is positive. Student nurse are interested to continue it as a post graduate program but consider that adequate efforts are put into providing support.

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