This study analyzed student perspective on neurology, including basic science, specialty perception, clinical experience and exposure, patient care, and their perception of neurologists in general, to improve the neurology experience and guide recruitment within medical education institutions.

There is a current and projected shortage of neurologists in practice across the United States. Neurophobia describes the general fear of medical students towards neurology as a specialty field. To gain updated insight into medical students’ perception of Neurology as a career choice, we examined their experiences in preclinical and clinical neurology education.

A mixed-methods study surveyed all four classes of medical students currently enrolled at Penn State College of Medicine (PSUCOM) in 2023. Each student was sent a survey querying the student’s neurology experience prior to medical school, during medical school preclinical coursework, and clinical coursework.

Our findings indicate a lack of neurology exposure resulting in poor first impressions of neuroanatomy at a medical school education level. Preclinical respondents’ only interaction with neurology involved their mandatory neuroscience course. Eighty percent of respondents felt that they had less exposure to neurology compared to other systems, and 53% felt that it was more difficult. Lack of familiarity with neurology correlated with reported concerns about knowledge gaps in clinical rotations and a significant association between neurology basic-science exposure and consideration of neurology as a career.

Current needs to mitigate Neurophobia in medical students include early intervention via exposure, mentorship, and prioritization of neuroscience foundations. The learners’ struggles with localization, secondary to unfamiliarity with neuroanatomy and vocabulary, affect their overall clerkship experience. There is room for investigation into students' attitudes toward discussion-based classes, such as Problem-Based Learning (PBL), and identifying other high yield tools for learning neuroanatomy and localization in the setting of curricular time constraints.