Where Can we Teach Clinical Psychiatry?

Abstract

Most medical students in the United States receive their clinical psychiatry training in community facilities with varied populations, clinical orientations and management systems. Given a substantial diversity in training sites available to the University of Nevada School of Medicine, we wondered if all of our students were learning the basic principles of psychiatry and if there were any differences based on placement. We analyzed outcomes of 139 students assigned to five different facilities. We concluded, based on a statistical analysis of a number of evaluation techniques, that our students did indeed meet the objectives of the educational experience without major differences.