Background: Medical students have unfavorable attitude towards Neurology and often perceive it as the most difficult medical specialty. This perception is described as " neurophobia " in the medical literature and its effects and potential solutions are being investigated in many countries around the world.
Methods: A cross sectional study was conducted in which a questionnaire was administered to a sample of third, fourth, fifth and sixth years’ medical students at Faculty of Medicine, University of Khartoum. The sample size was 310 selected through stratified, systematic random sampling technique. In this study, the questionnaire includes the following aspects: demographic data, assessment of the level of interest in Neurology as a future career, evaluating the satisfaction with the neurosciences course, identifying the factors which affect the attitude of students towards Neurology, highlighting the most useful strategies in teaching Neurology.
Results: Females constituted 71% of the respondents. 37.4% of the students had little or no interest and only 9.4% were strongly interested in Neurology.46.8% of the students graded their satisfaction with the course as neutral (i.e.: moderate) and 30.6% were unsatisfied with the delivered course (6.8% of them were strongly unsatisfied). Limited exposure to neurological patients and separation of basic sciences teaching from clinical application were considered as the top contributing factors to formation of this negative perception towards Neurology. Increased exposure to neurological patients, three dimensional simulators, video recordings, online resources as well as improving teaching skills of the lecturers were labeled as the most fruitful strategies to make progress in Neurology teaching.
Conclusion: This study reveals that 'neurophobia' probably affects a considerable proportion of medical students in Khartoum University. It reflects the possible contributing factors; Besides It encourages the stakeholders to modify the current approach to neuroscience and neurology education, and in this regard, it puts forward several strategies to make an evolution in this arena.