Academic Psychiatry 17: 21-25,
March
1993
© 1993 Academic Psychiatry
Learning Priorities of Staff, Residents, and Students for a Third-Year Psychiatric Clerkship
Peggy E. Chatham-Showalter M.D.1,
Edward K. Silberman M.D.2, and
Robert E. Hales M.D.3
1 Lehigh Valley Hospital, Allentown, Pennsylvania
2 Jefferson Medical College, Philadelphia, Pennsylvania
3 Department of Psychiatry, California Pacific Medical Center, San Francisco
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 3l 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 suicidality, 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.
Note:
The authors thank Dr. Joseph M. Rothberg, Ph.D., Research Mathematician at Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, for his assistance during this project. This work was presented in part at the 142nd annual meeting of the American Psychiatric Association, San Francisco, May 6-11, 1989.
