Improving residents' performance on the PRITE: is there a role for peer-assisted learning?

Objective: The authors implemented a peer-assisted learning approach to prepare residents for the Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Examination (PRITE), with the goal of increasing test performance.

Method: The authors developed a PRITE review curriculum utilizing a peer-assisted learning approach. The residents were randomly assigned to teams and instructed to teach assigned topic(s).

Can academic departments maintain industry relationships while promoting physician professionalism?

The authors describe the development of a comprehensive policy for relationships of full-time and volunteer faculty and residents with industry. The underlying philosophy was that an academic approach to relations with industry that emphasizes objective outcomes and internal change will be more effective than rote restrictions on behavior that assume that physicians cannot learn new behaviors and that are impossible to enforce. The policy, developed through much discussion and debate with stakeholders, involves elimination of industry-supplied meals, gifts, and favors; integration of industry-sponsored and academic research; education of faculty and residents about the ways in which industry marketing influences clinical decision making; and comprehensive disclosure by faculty, including to patients, of financial interests in industry.

What troubles clerks in psychiatry? A strategy to explore the question.

Objective: The psychiatric clerkship is a stressful experience that influences attitudes toward patients with psychiatric illnesses and influences recruitment into the field. This study focused on medical students' encounters with patients they found troubling or difficult, and whether specific themes regarding their emotional responses could be identified.

Methods: Third-year medical students rotating through the psychiatry clerkship participated in a problem patient conference for which they were required to submit a form detailing a troubling encounter that occurred with a patient in the prior week.

Elevated serum levels of C-reactive protein are associated with more severe psychopathology in a subgroup of patients with schizophrenia.

The present study examined the hypothesis that elevated serum levels of C-reactive protein (CRP) would be associated with more severe clinical symptoms in patients with schizophrenia. Twenty-six inpatients with schizophrenia or schizoaffective disorder were enrolled. Serum levels of CRP were measured, and each patient was assessed with the Positive and Negative Syndrome Scale (PANSS).