The earlier, the better: the effect of early community contact on the attitudes of medical students to older people.

Background: Early clinical contact for medical students is an important curricular innovation. We wished to determine if early contact with older people in the second year of a more vertically integrated medical undergraduate programme influenced attitudes to older people and if any effect was synergistic with the effect of an existing fourth year course.

Subjects: Second and fourth-year medical students.

Methods: We used a modified version of the Rosencranz-McNevin semantic differential on ageing to assess attitudes of medical students before and after a one-week early community contact week. Some second-year students were followed into fourth year and the effect on their attitudes of a health care of the elderly course was measured. We compared these data with attitude scores from an earlier cohort of students who had undertaken the fourth-year but not the second-year component.

Results: Contact with older people during second-year had a significantly favourable effect on attitudes to older people, especially for students who saw older people in the community rather than in rest homes. The attitudes towards older people of students who had undertaken a fourth-year clinical health care of the elderly attachment were significantly better on two of three subscales than those of fourth-year students who had not seen older people during their second year.

Conclusion: Contact with older people early in a medical student's training, and within a more vertically integrated programme, has a positive effect on attitudes to older people. This effect may be synergistic with contact later in training.