TY  - JOUR
A1  - Muschalla, Beate
A1  - Baron, Stefanie
A1  - Klevers, Theresa
T1  - Students or medical professionals: whose knowledge improved after social-medicine training?
T2  - Social Psychiatry & Psychiatric Epidemiology
N2  - Purpose 
Rehabilitation professionals are faced with judging and describing the social-medicine status of their patients. Rehabilitation professionals must know the core concepts of acute unfitness for work, psychological capacities, and long-term work capacity. 
Acquiring and applying this knowledge, requires training. The research question is if and to what extent medical professionals and students' knowledge changes after social medicine training. 

Methods 
This quasi-experimental study was carried out in the real-life context of social medicine training. Psychology students (n = 42), physicians/psychotherapists (i.e. state-licensed health professionals) (n = 44) and medical assistant professionals (n = 29) were trained. Their social medicine knowledge was measured before and after training by a 10-min expert-approved and content valid knowledge questionnaire. 
Three free-text questions had to be answered on the essential aspects of present and prognostic work ability and psychological capacities. 
Answers were rated for correctness by two experts. Paired t tests and variance analysis have been calculated for group comparisons. 

Results 
All groups improved their social medicine knowledge from the pre- to the post-test. The students started with the lowest level of knowledge in the pre-test. 
After training, 69% of the physicians/psychotherapists and 56.8% of the medical assistant professionals, but only 7% of the students, obtained maximum scores for naming psychological capacities. 

Conclusions 
Social medicine knowledge increased after a training course consisting of eight lessons. The increase was greater for medical assistant professionals and physicians/psychotherapists than for students. Social medicine training must be adjusted to the trainee groups' knowledge levels.
KW  - ICF
KW  - work ability
KW  - mental health
KW  - impairment
KW  - rehabilitation professionals
Y1  - 2022
UR  - https://publishup.uni-potsdam.de/frontdoor/index/index/docId/65230
SN  - 0933-7954
SN  - 1433-9285
VL  - 57
IS  - 7
SP  - 1505
EP  - 1514
PB  - Springer
CY  - Heidelberg
ER  -