Effectiveness of contact-based education for reducing mental illness-related stigma in pharmacy students

BMC Medical Education

Research Article

Alfred Remillard¹  Scott B Patten²  David M Gardner³  Andrew CH Szeto⁴  Geeta Modgill⁵  Aliya Kassam⁶  Leslie Phillips⁷ 

[1] College of Pharmacy and Nutrition, University of Saskatchewan, Saskatoon, SK, Canada;Community Health Sciences, University of Calgary, 3rd Floor TRW Bldg., 3280 Hospital Drive NW, Calgary, AB, Canada;Department of Psychiatry and College of Pharmacy, Dalhousie University, Halifax, NS, Canada;Mental Health Commission of Canada and Department of Psychology, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada;Mental Health Commission of Canada, Calgary, Canada;Post Graduate Medical Education and Medical Education Research Group, University of Calgary, Calgary, AB, Canada;School of Pharmacy, Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s NL, Canada;

关键词: Mental Illness;    Social Distance;    Community Pharmacist;    Early Group;    Pharmacy Student;   

DOI  :  10.1186/1472-6920-12-120

 received in 2012-04-30, accepted in 2012-11-20,  发布年份 2012

来源: Springer

【 摘 要 】

BackgroundA strategy for reducing mental illness-related stigma in health-profession students is to include contact-based sessions in their educational curricula. In such sessions students are able to interact socially with a person that has a mental illness. We sought to evaluate the effectiveness of this strategy in a multi-centre study of pharmacy students.MethodsThe study was a randomized controlled trial conducted at three sites. Because it was necessary that all students receive the contact-based sessions, the students were randomized either to an early or late intervention, with the late intervention group not having participated in the contact-based education at the time when the primary outcome was assessed. The primary outcome, stigma, was assessed using an attitudes scale called the Opening Minds Survey for Health Care Providers (OMS-HC).ResultsWe initially confirmed that outcomes were homogeneous across study centres, centre by group interaction, p = 0.76. The results were pooled across the three study centres. A significant reduction in stigma was observed in association with the contact-based sessions (mean change 4.3 versus 1.5, t=2.1, p=0.04). The effect size (Cohen’s d) was 0.45. A similar reduction was seen in the control group when they later received the intervention.ConclusionsContact-based education is an effective method of reducing stigma during pharmacy education. These results add to a growing literature confirming the effectiveness of contact-based strategies for stigma reduction in health profession trainees.

【 授权许可】

CC BY   
© Patten et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd. 2012