Medical students' views of psychiatric teaching methods

Simmons & Wilkinson ¹ demonstrated that medical students found cased-based discussion of child psychiatry more enjoyable and engaging than didactic lectures, with no reduction in exam performance. As the authors note, there is a dearth of studies comparing students’ experience and enjoyment of different teaching methods in psychiatry. We welcome research of this nature as it may help us to improve the undergraduate experience of medical students in psychiatry.

We conducted a survey of two cohorts of students’ (n=38) experiences of a 12-week undergraduate psychiatry rotation at a London teaching hospital. The programme consisted of grand rounds, in which students presented a case to the rest of the cohort and were marked by senior psychiatric trainees; web-based scenarios – online, problem-based cases with associated questions which students completed themselves and then were taught around the topic by junior psychiatric trainees; a series of seminars delivered by consultants and senior trainees; and firm clinical teaching including weekly tutorials by consultants.

The survey showed that on a range of 1 (very poor) to 5 (excellent), grand rounds received the highest average rating (4.1), followed by web-based scenarios (3.9), seminars (3.7) and finally firm teaching (3.6). Free-text responses showed that incorporating role-play style teaching into sessions was seen as particularly useful and students wanted more teaching delivered in this way. There was considerable variation in students’ experience of firm teaching, with some commenting on the lack of clinical experience or poor-quality tutorials, and others requesting more teaching with junior psychiatric trainees. Clinical teaching by its very nature is difficult to standardise as patients may not attend appointments and clinicians will have differing degrees of aptitude and enthusiasm for teaching, but optimising the student experience is crucial, so novel ways of controlling quality must be sought.

The results of this survey will be used to inform changes to this particular teaching programme such as increasing the use of role-play teaching and emphasising the importance of structured firm teaching, with regular consultant tutorials as well as sessions with junior doctors. The findings could also inform adjustments to psychiatric teaching programmes at other institutions. More studies examining the specific components of undergraduate teaching programmes in psychiatry are required to establish which teaching methods students find most stimulating and which aspects need improvement. Shaping teaching programmes in this way may improve the overall undergraduate experience of psychiatry for students and perhaps even help recruitment into the specialty.