Learning priorities of staff, residents, and students for a third-year psychiatric clerkship.
Psychiatric clerkships combine classroom instruction with patient care. The different learning experiences in those two settings prompted the authors to survey 86 third-year medical student clerks, 44 staff psychiatrists, and 15 PGY-2 psychiatric residents about the importance of 31 skill and knowledge areas as learning goals for clerks. All groups of respondents included the following five items (16.2%) among the most important: performing a mental status examination, becoming comfortable with psychiatric patients, evaluating suicidally, developing interview skills, and suspecting drug and alcohol problems. The importance placed by staff on aspects of the doctor-patient relationship was not apparent to students, who perceived psychiatric diagnosis as receiving higher priority than staff intended. The implications of these findings for curriculum planning are discussed.
Departments of Psychiatry of Walter Reed Army Medical Center and the Uniformed Services University of the Health Sciences, Washington, DC, USA.
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Chatham-Showalter
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Silberman
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Hales