Willingness to provide behavioral health recommendations: a cross-sectional study of entering medical students

BMC Medical Education

Table 2 Willingness of entering first-year medical students to provide behavioral health information and recommendations

Areas of communication	Intention to provide information “always or nearly always” for the indicated risk factor [(% of respondents)Average willingness score^a]
	Smoking in 45-year-old	Alcohol use in 38-year-old with indications of alcoholism	Diet and exercise in overweight, sedentary 23-year-old	Sexual activity including intercourse in 16-year-old
Discuss associated health risks	(90.3 %)	(86.0 %)	(80.7 %)	(95.7 %)
	3.87	3.73	3.80	3.95
Recommend elimination of high-risk behavior	(78.5 %)	(64.5 %)	(87.1 %)	(28.0 %)
	3.73	3.40	3.83	2.11 ^*
Provide harm reduction information	(79.6 %)	(85.0 %)	(74.2 %)	(94.6 %)
	3.75	3.76	3.66	3.94
Assure patient of continued care whether or not recommendations are accepted	(73.1 %)	(71.0 %)	(78.5 %)	(90.2 %)
	3.61	3.54	3.66	3.84

^a Average willingness score based on a five-level Likert scale addressing the respondent’s self-reported likelihood of providing the information subset: (0) never, (1) rarely, (2) about half of cases, (3) usually, or (4) always or nearly always.
* p < 0.001, Friedman’s rank test for comparison of willingness scores across the four clinical scenarios. Pair-wise comparisons, adjusted for multiple comparisons, revealed that this result was statistically different from the willingness scores in this area of communication for the other cases.

ISSN: 1472-6920