Teaching of psychosomatic medicine and psychotherapy as an element of the Dresden DIPOL-Curriculum -- the PBL-course "Nervous system" and psyche

Abstract

A federal law, the "Approbationsordnung für Arzte", regulates Medical education in Germany. In 2002 a revised version of this law demanded of the medical faculties to implement interdisciplinary and problem-based (PBL) courses in their curriculum. Already in 1998 the faculty of medicine of the TU Dresden decided to reform the traditional curriculum. The reform-curriculum is being created in close co-operation with the Harvard Medical School. It is a hybrid curriculum retaining traditional elements as lectures and bedside teaching with PBL-tutorials and a special doctor-patient-communication-training, which is based on role-play exercises. Psychosomatic Medicine is taught together with neurology and psychiatry as a major topic of the 7,5-week PBL-course "Nervous System and Psyche" but there are also lectures and special skills training exercises in other PBL-courses like "Oncology" or "Emergency medicine". Data of the external evaluation showed, that the students accepted psychosomatic topics of the curriculum very well. This paper describes concept, implementation and evaluation data of the PBL-course "Nervous System and Psyche".