Abstract
The issue of the straight internship in psychiatry has not been sufficiently explored experimentally. In order to evaluate the performance of straight interns and residents with prior medical post-graduate training we compared 141 trainees on various measures of performance (intraining evaluations, final year residency examinations, and Royal College of Physicians certification examinations). The three study groups (straight interns, residents graduating from North American medical schools, and graduates of foreign medical schools) showed no difference on five of the six main outcome measures. Straight interns performed significantly better (p<0.05) than either of the two other groups on the final year residency written examination. They also scored significantly higher than the foreign medical graduates on various items of the in-training evaluations. Thus, although the issue of the Straight Internship appears to have been settled by policy adjustments, it still remains open to further examination.
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Packer, S., Engels, W.D. & Engelsmann, F. Straight Interns and Other Psychiatric Residents: A Comparative Study. Acad Psychiatry 9, 49–59 (1985). https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399945
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/BF03399945