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Abstract:
Early childhood is the most critical period of time to implement children's rights. Therefore, the aim of this study is to investigate the attitudes of medical students towards child rights in early childhood. This questionnaire based on the United Nations Convention on the Rights of the Child (UNCRC) and General Comment No. 7 (GC7) was administered to a sample of medical students in Turkey. The correlation between the attitudes towards the GC7's general principles of early childhood and children's rights defined by the UNCRC was analyzed with Kendall's Tau Correlation. Statistical significance was predetermined as p<0.05. A total of 304 medical students ranging from 1st to 5th year voluntarily answered the questionnaires. Of students, 54.1% were female with mean age of 21.3?2.7 years; and 10.6% reported they had received training about children's rights. Statistically significant negative correlations were detected between conventional attitudes that do not respect the agency of young children, and the children's rights as defined by the UNCRC and the general principles of early childhood set out by the GC7 (p<0.05). In response to the question about whether even the youngest children have the right to have views and to express them, 64.4% of the participants responded with "I strongly agree". Conventional attitudes held by medical students such as 'not respecting the agency of young children" is a significant factor violating the children's right to participation in early childhood. The curriculum of medical schools should include courses that aim to improve students' attitudes towards implementation of child rights in early childhood.
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