The emergency room as a clerkship site

The psychiatric emergency room of a county hospital is one of five clinical placement sites for the authors' medical school junior clerkship. The students assigned to the emergency room share the same core didactic work as students who are placed at more traditional sites, but the emergency room students have additional seminars in crisis intervention, aspects of emergency psychiatry, and orientation to social agencies. Analysis of data measuring the achievement of behavioral objectives common to all five clinical sites shows that emergency room students, in comparison with their peers at other sites, averaged more patient contact, more direct observation, and more supervisory experiences.