Effect of teaching on students' attitudes to self-poisoning.

The attitudes of students, resident house physicians, and medical social workers towards 10 medical conditions were assessed in relation to both personal attitudes and the opinions expressed of the attitudes of the medical profession. Final-year students and house physicians showed unfavourable attitudes towards self-poisoning in contrast to fourth-year students and medical social workers. The fourth-year students were given the opportunity to admit patients referred to hospital with self-poisoning and visited the family doctor and the patient after discharge. After this exposure there was a subjective impression that the students became more interested in the problems of use self-poisoned patients, and this was supported by a review of their attitudes at the end of the teaching project.