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

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

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 Conclusion

Medical schools should carefully consider care internships to ensure that students do not worsen their views on older patients, which may occur due to inadequate contact depth and quality within a rather unsupportive context.

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