Medical School Electives Explore Psychiatry in Depth

Psychiatric educators charged with designing and overseeing psychiatry electives for medical students face the daunting challenge of making those electives interesting and professionally valuable, while giving an in-depth view of some of the field's diverse areas.

Several educators who have taken on the mission described their programs at the annual meeting of the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry in San Diego in June.

Aurora Bennett, M.D., is the program coordinator of the new Psychiatry Clinical Scholars Program at the University of Cincinnati College of Medicine. Each year two students will be eligible for the program, one of the rare psychiatry electives that are four years long. Its goal is to expose the students “to the breadth of emerging research and clinical treatment modalities in psychiatry” and the “continuum of psychiatric illnesses and their manifestations across the lifespan,” said Bennett.

When the program begins in the 2005-06 academic year, each student will be assigned a mentor who is expert in an area in which the student expresses interest. The mentorship will continue through the basic-science and clinical years of medical school, and the pair is expected to have regular meetings to discuss research, patient care, and career-related issues. The mentor can also design educational experiences that illuminate these issues. Bennett will coordinate these experiences.

In their first year, the clinical scholars will meet with a research faculty member who will oversee a project the students carry out. They will receive instruction in various aspects of the research process including the critical one of grant writing. Students will present their findings at a departmental research seminar and receive a $3,000 stipend for their summer research activities.

During the second year, students will meet monthly with their mentor and the program coordinator, Bennett noted. A wide range of half-day clinical experiences will be made available to them, which can include children, geriatric patients, patients with HIV disease, and substance-abuse patients. They can also observe ECT, for example, and gain exposure to treatment of mentally ill individuals who are incarcerated or in emergency settings.

These activities will continue into the third school year, and students will be invited to attend psychiatry department conferences.

In their fourth year the scholars and their mentors will design an elective that provides experiences in an area in which the students are particularly interested but to which they have not been exposed or one in which they would like more in-depth knowledge.

Evaluation of and feedback from students will occur at several points during the program, Bennett explained.