Association between beliefs in medical conspiracy theories and health behaviors among medical and healthcare students. Implications for professional practice.

ABSTRACT:

Background

While conspiracy theories cover many different themes, medical conspiracy theories (MCTs) have become particularly prevalent in modern societies. As beliefs in MCTs can become a source of "infodemics", influence individual health behaviors and cause distrust in medical institutions and personnel, healthcare workers must find ways to overturn patients' conspiracy thinking. However, as the medical world is not free of these beliefs, in this study, we investigated beliefs in MCTs among medical and health science students and their association with reported health behaviors.

Methods

Our sample was derived from a self-administered, anonymized, computer-assisted web survey conducted among 1,175 medical and health science students enrolled at the Poznan University of Med

SUBMITTER: Domaradzki J 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC11439324 | biostudies-literature | 2024 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature