Pharmacy Students' Preparedness to Communicate With Mental Health Disorders Patients

Abstract

The aim of this project was to explore whether fourth-year pharmacy students in England are prepared to communicate with mental health patients. Mental health problems are rising in the United Kingdom, affecting around one in four people. A questionnaire-based study measured the knowledge about and attitude toward mental health problems. Participants were fourth-year pharmacy students from two west midlands universities. More males than females correctly answered the "attitude towards mental health" questions. However, overall, only 45.5% of students answered the "attitude towards mental health problems" questions correctly. Males demonstrated a better level of knowledge than females, with 33% overall answering 6 or more questions of the 13 knowledge questions correctly. Sixty-five percent of participants scored under 50%. The highest total score was 81%, and the lowest was 19%, three people did not answer any questions. In conclusion, a gap in knowledge was identified within the fourth-year pharmacy student cohort, and more intervention will be required to improve knowledge and attitudes such as the Mental Health First Aid courses.

Australian exercise physiology student attitudes and knowledge towards people living with mental illness

“…However, to better prepare exercise physiologists for the growing MH workforce, an essential first step is to understand the knowledge and attitudes of students towards people with MI. Similar studies in pharmacy students demonstrate knowledge gaps that can be filled with professional development (Chow et al , 2018). Given no previous study has examined these factors in exercise physiology students, the aim of this study was to determine the knowledge and attitudes of final year Australian exercise physiology students towards people living with MI.…”

“…The questionnaire provided to participants is displayed in Figure 1. The 24-item questionnaire was adapted from an MH First Aid Australia (MHFA) questionnaire, which was previously used to examine the preparedness of final-year pharmacy undergraduates in working with people with MI (Chow et al , 2018). Two additional demographic questions were added to those used by Chow et al (2018), which asked the participant’s age, as well a question to determine if participants had completed an MH placement while at university.…”

“…The 24-item questionnaire was adapted from an MH First Aid Australia (MHFA) questionnaire, which was previously used to examine the preparedness of final-year pharmacy undergraduates in working with people with MI (Chow et al , 2018). Two additional demographic questions were added to those used by Chow et al (2018), which asked the participant’s age, as well a question to determine if participants had completed an MH placement while at university. One question was removed from the Chow et al (2018) questionnaire, which asked, which university participants attended, as only students from one university in Sydney were invited to participate.…”

“…Two additional demographic questions were added to those used by Chow et al (2018), which asked the participant’s age, as well a question to determine if participants had completed an MH placement while at university. One question was removed from the Chow et al (2018) questionnaire, which asked, which university participants attended, as only students from one university in Sydney were invited to participate.…”

“…Response options for these questions were “agree”, “disagree” or “do not know”. The themes of the attitude questions were centred on statements relating to varying MIs and correct answers were those that were deemed to be a favourable attitude towards people with MI [correct responses were identified based on the MHFA questionnaire as reported by Chow et al (2018)].…”