Evaluation of the SAID Teaching Program

Evaluation of a new teaching program suggests that second-year medical students can be taught psychiatry with a multimedia combination of filmed interviews with patients, an inventory of critical symptoms, a diagnostic chart illustrating clustering of symptoms for basic diagnosis, and rapid feedback of faculty evaluation. When compared with controls, experimental subjects did significantly better in evaluating filmed patients, but there was only a trend that they did better when evaluating psychiatric patients at the bedside. The students rated this program as an effective teaching approach.