Clerkship students' use of a video library for training the mental status examination.

Fewer patient encounters and diminished bedside teaching pose a challenge to medical students' opportunity to learn during clinical clerkships in psychiatry. Videos can be used for close examination of signs and symptoms and to increase engagement and recall. A video library holding recordings of psychiatric patients with mental status examinations were prepared.

Variability between psychiatrists on domains of the mental status examination.

The Mental Status Examination (MSE) is a core element of the psychiatric assessment. To investigate the current level of psychopathological knowledge, the reliability of the MSE can be used as a proxy as it is based on descriptive psychopathology. Three psychiatrists wrote their MSE based on 27 video recordings.

E-Library of Authentic Patient Videos Improves Medical Students' Mental Status Examination.

Objective: During psychiatric rotation, clerkship students must learn the clinical skill of recording an accurate Mental Status Examination (MSE). The authors built a video e-library consisting of 23 authentic patient videos that were accessible on a secure website during the rotation period, aimed at assisting students' acquisition of MSE skills.

Methods: The authors conducted a prospective case comparison study investigating the impact of the video e-library as "add-on" intervention, on acquisition of MSE skills, as measured by a test consisting of three videos with adjoining forced choice questionnaires.

Hemodynamic responses to mental stress during salt loading.

Purpose: The purpose was to examine whether prolonged moderate stress associated with a student exam would increase the blood pressure response to a salt load in young healthy normotensive individuals.

Methods: Ten healthy young subjects were examined at two different occasions in random order (i) during preparation for a medical exam (prolonged stress) and (ii) outside the exam period (low stress). All subjects consumed a controlled diet for 3 days with low- or high-salt content in randomized order.