Identifying medical students’ attitudes towards ‘holism’

Schmidt K¹, Rees C², Greenfield S³, Wearn A⁴, Dennis I⁵

¹Peninsula Medical School, Universities of Exeter and Plymouth, 25 Victoria Park Road, Exeter, EX2 4NT, UK

²Peninsula Medical School, University of Exeter, Heavitree Road, Room F10, St Lukes Campus, Exeter, EX1 2LU, UK

³Department of General Practice, University of Birmingham, Birmingham, B15 2TT, UK

⁴Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, University of Auckland, Auckland, 1, New Zealand

⁵School of Psychology, Plymouth University, Drake Circus, Plymouth, PL4 8AA, UK

Objective

It was the aim of this survey to assess internationally first-year medical students’ attitudes towards the concept of ‘holism’.

Materials and methods

First-year medical students at six international medical schools (Birmingham, UK; Peninsula Medical School, UK; Auckland Medical School, NZ; Toronto Medical School, Canada; Washington Medical School, USA and Hong Kong Medical School, Hong Kong) were asked to participate in a multicentre survey measuring attitudes towards ‘holism’. A modified version of the 28-item Integrated Medical Attitude Questionnaire was used to carry out this survey. Ethics committee approval was received from all six medical schools. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to validate the reported constructs in the North American (n = 265) and UK (n = 236) samples and models were developed to investigate the relationships between attitudes towards ‘holism’ and demographic and education-related characteristics.

Results

A total of 639 usable responses were collected. Further results will be presented at the symposium.

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