A questionnaire to measure medical students' attitudes towards occupational medicine.

BACKGROUND: Occupational medicine is not well represented in medical curricula. Educational programmes should aim at raising the interest of medical students in occupational medicine. AIMS: To develop a questionnaire to measure the attitude of medical students towards occupational medicine. METHODS: We drew up statements about attitudes. We used a 5-point Likert scale to elicit answers from second-year medical students. We analysed the questionnaires with exploratory factor analysis to find common scales. After item reduction, we used the questionnaire in third-year medical students from another medical faculty, before and after education. RESULTS: Responses from 141 second-year and 208 third-year medical students were available. Analysis resulted in 18 statements in three scales: a career as an occupational physician, occupational medicine as an interesting speciality and role of the occupational physician. We measured modest changes following an occupational medicine programme. Further development of the questionnaire with qualitative research will lead to better usability. CONCLUSIONS: This questionnaire can be used to measure attitude towards occupational medicine; however, this questionnaire needs to be developed further.