Impacts of clinical psychiatric posting experience on specialization intention and associated factors among Nursing Science students

Abstract

Background Globally, there is increasingly high prevalence of mental disorders across all age groups and social classes with more being projected by 2030 but without commensurate resources for mental health care delivery especially in developing countries. Purpose This study assessed the career choice in psychiatry before and after clinical psychiatric posting and associated factors among nursing students. Methods A prospective cohort research design was used and data collected using ATP, MICA-4 and researcher developed questionnaires on career choice in pre and post clinical posting approach. A sample size of 800 students (400 before posting and another 400 students after posting) were involved in the study. Data were coded, cleaned and analyzed using SPSS version 26. McNemar Test was used to determine the effects of clinical posting on career choices in psychiatry. Simple and multiple logistic regressions were used to analyze data on determinants of career choices in psychiatry. The hypotheses were tested at p-value < 0.05. Results Psychiatric and mental health nursing was one of the least preferred specialty with 21(6%) respondents who showed interest before clinical posting and 25(7.1%) after the posting. Commonly preferred specialty choice was pediatric nursing (20.5%), community health nursing (17.1%) and midwifery (17.7%). McNemer test showed no statistically significant differences in choice of psychiatry before and after clinical posting. Key determinants of career choices were interest in psychiatry (AOR = 16.06(95% CI = 1.10, 129.01)P = 0.009), interest in community services (AOR = 4.01(95% CI = 1.32, 12.20)P = 0.014), family influence(AOR = 13.76(95% CI = 1.74, 108.57)p = 0.013) and job satisfaction(AOR = 0.10(95% CI = 0.03, 0.26)P < 0.001). Conclusion the researcher therefore concluded that key factors are responsible for the none choice of career in psychiatry and such should be put into consideration when planning measures to improve acceptability of the specialty area among the students..