An assessment of medical students' experiences of learning about the psychosocial enquiry in their introductory clinical course.
Medical students' ability to take a meaningful psychosocial history has been shown to decline during clinical training. We postulated that psychosocial histories are given a low priority in busy clinical attachments. The aim of this study was to identify factors that affect how medical students gain skills in psychosocial assessment. A random sample of 37 students filled in a questionnaire before and after their introductory course, and they were asked to keep a logbook of their experiences of teaching about psychosocial history taking. There were 504 teaching experiences recorded of which less than half were positive. Negative experiences often related to poor communication by clinicians. At the end of the course less than half the students felt confident in taking a psychosocial history. To improve doctors' skills in this important area we suggest that teaching in psychosocial history taking should be made explicit, as an integrated part of the overall assessment of a patient.
Brennan
C.
C
School of Medicine, University of Leeds, UK.
Thistlethwaite
J.E.
JE
Williams
C.J.
CJ