Objective

To explore university health science students' intimate partner violence tolerance and sexist attitudes and to examine their trend throughout the academic years.

Methods

Cross-sectional study of students of both sexes of the degrees of medicine, nursing, and psychology from three selected Spanish universities (n = 1,322). Data were collected anonymously using two validated scales: the Dating Violence Questionnaire (DVQ-R) and the Gender Role Attitudes Scale (GRAS). Logistic regressions were used to compare tolerance toward violence and sexist attitudes across the degrees. The evolution of these variables throughout different academic courses was assessed.

Results

Of the sample, 62.8% were tolerant towards intimate partner violence. The percentage of tolerant students was significantly higher in Psychology (75.9%) than in Nursing (57.7%) and Medicine Degrees (60.3%). A higher percentage of sexist students was also found in psychology students (80.8%) than in nursing (62.2%) and medicine students (62.7%). Compared to the first-year students, female medicine students of the last courses were less tolerant to intimate partner violence (p-trend <0.001), and male medicine students had less sexist attitudes (p-trend = 0.002).

Conclusions

Tolerance of intimate partner violence and sexist attitudes were very high, especially among psychology students. These indicators were significantly better among medicine students of higher courses, suggesting a positive effect of medical training. Intimate partner violence in the university education of the future health professionals should be addressed.

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