A one-week attachment to an urban primary health care clinic was introduced into the eight-week psychiatric teaching block for fourth (penultimate) year medical students at the University of Zimbabwe. Its objective was to alert students to underlying psychological disorder in patients presenting, at primary health care level, with physical symptomatology. Students were required to screen patients using a 20-item questionnaire, take a psychosocial history of all high-scoring patients, and make one home visit. The attachment proved both popular and valuable, and it is anticipated that this will now become an integral part of the psychiatric teaching block.
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