Psychiatry clerkship core curriculum renewal: assessing the shift to larger-group learning.

Background/objective: A curriculum renewal of the third-year psychiatry clerkship rotation at University of Toronto Medical School resulted in a shift from case-based, small-group teaching at multiple teaching sites to the delivery of core material in a larger-group format. The authors examine the effects of this change in curriculum delivery.

Method: Student examination performance and student evaluations of the clerkship rotation and teaching were compared for the years before and after adoption of the updated, larger-group format curriculum.

Teaching to Teach in Toronto.

Objective: The training objectives for postgraduate education in the United States and Canada both state that teaching skills should be formally developed during training. This article reviews the development of the Teaching-to-Teach program at the University of Toronto Department of Psychiatry, the current curriculum, evaluation, and future directions of the program. The authors highlight some of the challenges encountered and discuss ideas for implementation of similar programs in diverse training settings.

Evaluation of the Claassen Institute of Psychiatry for Medical Students.

Objective: Psychiatric educators need to develop innovative strategies to attract more medical students to psychiatry. In 2008, the University of Western Australia held the inaugural Claassen Institute of Psychiatry for Medical Students. This novel program aimed to increase students' level of interest in psychiatry as a career opportunity.

Choosing a career in psychiatry: influential factors within a medical school program.

Objective: To examine the influence of initial interest, pre-clerkship experiences, clerkship experiences, and enrichment activities on choosing a career in psychiatry.

Method: Residents in psychiatry at the authors' medical school completed a survey that examined each of these factors in relation to career choice.

Results: Thirty participants ranked initial interest as the most influential factor.

A pilot survey of patient-initiated assaults on medical students during clinical clerkship.

Objectives: To assess the incidents of patient-initiated assault (PIA) against clinical clerks during the first six months of clinical clerkship. To characterise the assaults with respect to service, location, clerk gender, patient gender. To examine the students' perceptions of the reporting process for PIA.

The Clerk Crisis Clinic: a novel educational program.

Objective: Although there is a literature discussing and describing medical students providing psychotherapy, there has been little written about students doing crisis therapy with an emergency department patient population. At the University of Toronto, third-year clinical clerks can do a rotation in the Clerk Crisis Clinic where they are assigned patients who are preselected from the emergency department population. The author describes the program and presents results from questionnaires given to patients and students between 1997 and 2000.