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Medical students' views about an undergraduate curriculum in psychiatry before and after clinical placements.

ABSTRACT: BACKGROUND: It has been suggested that medical students wish to focus their learning in psychiatry on general skills that are applicable to all doctors. This study seeks to establish what aspects of psychiatry students perceive to be relevant to their future careers and what psychiatric knowledge and skills they consider to be important. It is relevant to consider whether these expectations about learning needs vary prior to and post-placement in psychiatry. To what extent these opinions should influence curriculum development needs to be assessed. METHODS: A questionnaire was distributed to medical students before they commenced their psychiatry placement and after they had completed it. The questionnaire considered the relevance of psychiatry to their future careers, the relevance of particular knowledge and skills, the utility of knowledge of psychiatric specialties and the utility of different settings for learning psychiatry. RESULTS: The students felt skills relevant to all doctors, such as assessment of suicide risk, were more important than more specialist psychiatric skills, such as the management of schizophrenia. They felt that knowledge of how psychiatric illnesses present in general practice was important and it was a useful setting in which to learn psychiatry. They thought that conditions that are commonly seen in the general hospital are important and that liaison psychiatry was useful. CONCLUSION: Two ways that medical students believe their teaching can be made more relevant to their future careers are highlighted in this study. Firstly, there is a need to focus on scenarios which students will commonly encounter in their initial years of employment. Secondly, psychiatry should be better integrated into the overall curriculum, with the opportunity for teaching in different settings. However, when developing curricula the need to listen to what students believe they should learn needs to be balanced against the necessity of teaching the fundamentals and principles of a speciality.

SUBMITTER: Oakley C

PROVIDER: S-EPMC2383892 | biostudies-other | 2008

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-other

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Medical students' views about an undergraduate curriculum in psychiatry before and after clinical placements.

Oakley Clare C Oyebode Femi F

BMC medical education 20080425

<h4>Background</h4>It has been suggested that medical students wish to focus their learning in psychiatry on general skills that are applicable to all doctors. This study seeks to establish what aspects of psychiatry students perceive to be relevant to their future careers and what psychiatric knowledge and skills they consider to be important. It is relevant to consider whether these expectations about learning needs vary prior to and post-placement in psychiatry. To what extent these opinions ...[more]

PMID: 18439278

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Project description:BackgroundThere is increasing interest in global health teaching among medical schools and their students. Schools in the UK and internationally are considering the best structure, methods and content of global health courses. Academic work in this area, however, has tended to either be normative (specifying what global health teaching ought to look like) or descriptive (of a particular intervention, new module, elective, etc.).MethodsWhile a number of studies have explored student perspectives on global health teaching, these have often relied on tools such as questionnaires that generate little in-depth evidence. This study instead used qualitative methods to explore medical student perspectives on global health in the context of a new global health module established in the core medical curriculum at a UK medical school.ResultsFifth year medical students participated in a structured focus group session and semi-structured interviews designed to explore their knowledge and learning about global health issues, as well as their wider perspectives on these issues and their relevance to professional development. While perspectives on global health ranged from global health 'advocate' to 'sceptic', all of the students acknowledged the challenges of prioritising global health within a busy curriculum.ConclusionsStudents are highly alert to the diverse epistemological issues that underpin global health. For some students, such interdisciplinarity is fundamental to understanding contemporary health and healthcare. For others, global health is merely a topic of geographic relevance. Furthermore, some students appeared to accept global health as a specialist area only relevant to professionals working overseas, while others considered it to be an essential part of working in the globalised world and therefore relevant to all medical professionals. Students also clearly noted that including 'soft' subjects and more discursive approaches to teaching and learning often sits awkwardly in a programme where 'harder' forms of knowledge and didactic methods tend to dominate. This suggests that more work needs to be done to explain the relevance of global health to medical students at the very beginning of their studies.

Project description:ObjectivesTo evaluate the impact and transferability of a novel teaching method on virtual communication skills for final year medical students.DesignMixed-methods, interventional before-and-after study.SettingNHS Lanarkshire, Scotland.Participants21 final year medical students on their obstetrics and gynaecology (O&G) placement from September to December 2020.InterventionsA two-part teaching session on virtual communication skills.Main outcome measuresSelf-reported confidence in conducting consultations preteaching and post-teaching, exposure to virtual consultations, usefulness of teaching and transferability to primary care. Data were collected using preteaching and post-teaching evaluation tools and an online survey.ResultsOf 21 participants, 1 student did not attend the second session so was excluded from post-teaching evaluation results and the online survey. Preteaching results were collected from 21 participants and post-teaching results from 20. Mean confidence scores increased across all domains post-teaching. Mean confidence in opening the consultation increased from 2.67 (95% CI 2.21 to 3.13) to 4.70 (95% CI 4.50 to 4.90); history-taking from 3.38 (95% CI 3.07 to 3.69) to 4.45 (95% CI 4.19 to 4.71); decision-making and forming a management plan from 2.62 (95% CI 2.28 to 2.96) to 3.90 (95% CI 3.66 to 4.14) and closing the consultation from 2.81 (95% CI 2.45 to 3.17) to 4.60 (95% CI 4.38 to 4.81). There was no change in exposure to virtual consultations during O&G placement. 16 (80%) participants responded to the online survey; 14 (87.5%) rated the sessions 'very useful' and all 16 considered them worthwhile continuing. 12 (75%) had the opportunity to practise virtual consultations on general practitioner, mostly via telephone.ConclusionsWe found that teaching students virtual consultation skills improved short term confidence and were transferable to primary care placements. Future research is suggested to assess this teaching model following adaptation and incorporation into medical education and training across specialties and grades. It would be useful to evaluate the impact on competence post intervention through observed skills.

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Dataset Information

Medical students' views about an undergraduate curriculum in psychiatry before and after clinical placements.

Publications

Medical students' views about an undergraduate curriculum in psychiatry before and after clinical placements.

Similar Datasets

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