Abstract:
This paper explored the effect of psychiatric clinical exposure and instruction on attitude of basic nursing students towards the mentally ill. Specific objectives of this study were to: investigate the attitude of student nurses towards the mentally ill before and after psychiatric clinical exposure and instruction, determine the unit of instruction and clinical exposure that promotes change in attitude of student nurses towards the mentally ill following intervention and determine the relationship between demographic variables and attitude of student nurses towards the mentally ill before and after clinical exposure and instruction. The study adopted quasi-experimental one group design. The Community Attitudes towards the Mentally Ill Scale and researcher structured questionnaire was used. A total of 90 students participated in the survey. Responses were analyzed using descriptive statistics including frequency, mean, and standard deviation. Inferential statistics (T-test and ANOVA) were used to determine the relationship between demographic variables and attitude towards the mentally ill. The findings in this study revealed that there was a change of respondents’ attitude (75%) from pre to post intervention in their benevolence and social restrictiveness towards the mentally ill. This study also demonstrated that student’s attitudes differ pre intervention (p-value .002) and this suggests that they would behave differently towards patients with mental illness. All the units in the curriculum were found to promote change of attitude of students towards people with mental illness. The study demonstrated that the demographic variables tested had no influence on the attitude of the student nurses towards the mentally ill. Finally, the study concludes that psychiatric clinical exposure and instruction have a positive effect to some extent on attitude of the respondents towards the mentally ill.
