The Summer Preceptorship in Psychiatry as a Facilitator of Medical Career Choice

Abstract

The authors surveyed the sixty-three preceptees who had completed a university psychiatry summer preceptorship in the past five years as to their perception of the preceptorship and its relation to their specialty choices. Fifty-four former preceptees responded (86%). Of the forty-three who indicated choice of specialty, twenty-six chose person-oriented (including fourteen who chose psychiatry) as opposed to technique-oriented specialties. Subsequent performance in the third year psychiatry clerkship of recent sophomore preceptees exceeds that of sophomores who did not participate in the preceptorship. Direct inferences of these findings cannot be made without more information about early socialization factors of the subjects. Nevertheless, results support continuation of the summer preceptorship program as an effective technique for training prospective physicians to be more person-oriented, providing an experience from which students can increase their knowledge of psychiatry, and allowing for a unique experience from which a more rational choice of medical specialty may be made.