What do medical students, residents and graduated physicians think about occupational physicians? A cross-national survey on stereotypes

Introduction: French medical students can access occupational medicine after passing the residency examination. Few studies have looked at the lack of attractiveness of occupational medicine, contributing to the demographic decline of occupational physicians (OPs). The purpose of this study was to explore the stereotypes of OPs by their colleagues at different levels of formation to understand the determinants of the current lack of attractiveness.

Methods: An anonymous survey was sent to medical students, residents and graduated physicians in March and April 2021. After filling a part about socio-demographic data, participants were asked to give four words about OP, based on the hierarchical evocation method. A descending hierarchical classification method was used to classify words according to their lexical proximity. Then, the corpus' central core was defined by prototypical analysis.

Results: 268 students (107 medical students and 161 residents) and 136 graduated physicians completed the questionnaire. The most important class was about 'negative stereotypes of OP'. In the prototypical analysis, the central core was composed of both words relative to the « OP's skills » and a majority of words concerning 'OP's negative stereotypes'.

Conclusion: This study confirmed that OPs suffer from negative stereotyping by their colleagues. Better communication of their functions throughout medical school would improve their image in the medical community.