Evaluation of Medical Student Attitudes toward Alcoholics Anonymous

Abstract

This is a two–phase study on attitudes of medical students toward Alcoholics Anonymous. The first phase compares views of addiction faculty to third–year medical students on the importance of spirituality in addiction treatment. We administered a questionnaire to assess attitudes toward spiritual, biological, and psychosocial approaches to addiction treatment. The faculty viewed spirituality as relatively more important in addiction treatment than did the students. The second phase was designed to assess whether medical student attitudes toward spiritually based treatments changed over the course of a psychiatry clerkship. At the beginning of the clerkship, students rated a spiritually oriented approach as important in addiction treatment as a biological approach, whereas, at the end of the clerkship, they rated the biological approach as more important. It may be important to educate medical students about the spiritual dimensions of recovery so they can integrate this into their treatment of addiction.