The Use of a Selective Clinical Experience in a Psychiatry Clerkship

Abstract

After discussing the problems in teaching clinical psychiatry to medical students, the authors describe the program at the Downstate Medical Center. They pay particular attention to the role of the course coordinator, the priority of medical student education in a department of psychiatry, the value of small group teaching, and the advantages of a clinical perceptorship given by individual faculty members. Further, the introduction of a system is described in which students choose their clinical assignment. After the introduction of this system student interest in psychiatry improved, the number of unsatisfactory grades decreased, and the number of outstanding grades increased. Following its adoption in psychiatry, all the clinical departments in the medical school inaugurated a similar self-selection method.