The knowledge, attitude and mood effects of forensic autopsy education to the medical school students

Aim: Class 5 student?s knowledge and attitude are changed after joining ?Medicolegal Aspects of Death? TASK programmeand autopsy are affected students physical and emotional. In this study, we aimed Dokuz Eylül University Faculty of Medicine of Class 5 students after the TASK application, changing of knowledge, attitudes and changes in the affected states to assess the physical and emotional. The goal of this study is to evaluate the effects of knowledge, addition, physical and emotional behavior changes after the TASK application on Class 5 students.Method: Our study is focused on Class 5 students who attended to ?Medicolegal Aspects of Death? TASK programme in 2009-2010 and 2010-2011 academic year, 2009-2010 academic year of Class 6 and 2010-2011 academic year of Class 1 students. We investigated the sociodemographic characteristics, knowledge and attitudes about autopsy, comments relating to the application of medicolegal autopsy, before and after application of the autopsy findings in terms of levels of anxiety and somatization of Class 5 students with the questionnaire.Results: 422 medicine students who are 86 (% 20) class 5, 227 (%54) class 1, 109 (%26) class 6, participate the questionnare. % 96,2 of them think that medicolegal autopsy contribution to their medical education and % 93,5 of them think that non- forensic expert physicians is not appropriate to the application of forensic autopsy. Class 5 students' anxiety levels increase in the first encounter with post-mortem practice, the last day of TASK's primary decrease in anxiety level, female students had higher anxiety levels than males. Somatization symptoms decreased after the application of autopsy.Discussion and Conclusion: In this study, students' said that forensic autopsy applications were performed in inappropriate conditions and this situation was adversely affected students' thoughts about implementation of forensic autopsies. We believe that in order to perform the forensic autopsies in suitable conditions according to national and international protocols, financial possibilities should be provided, and also forensic autopsies are very important for the protection of the rights of individuals and importance of society confidence in the justice should be considered. Students who participated for the first time to forensic autopsies, had increased levels of anxiety and adversely affected by the application of forensic autopsies. In order to reduce these negative situations, the education which made before TASK course, should be considered by the Medical Education and Psychiatry Departments again.Keywords: Forensic autopsies, medical education, mood, attitude, knowledge.