Teaching Psychiatry to Medical Students: A Lesson for the Teacher

Abstract

As in the clinical practice of medicine, crises are common events in the lives of those who teach. When these are viewed as episodes in the development and continuation of a teaching-learning situation, they serve to focus attention on the entire learning process. The refusal by a section of second year medical students to sign their psychiatry quiz papers is taken as such an event and is scrutinized to help define the task of a teacher of psychiatry in an era of confrontation.

With a conceptual focus on the dyad of teacher and student, and a consideration of the collaborative definition of goals, content, methods and evaluation procedures, the author describes his delayed recognition of the full impact of the milieu on the students. Their perception of the evaluation process and the necessity to involve them in it is described. Such elements as work overload, a minimization of the relative importance of psychiatric learning, an understandable fear and mistrust of authority are considered, as are the students' wishes to be good physicians and to receive feedback.

A solution to this problem which resolved the crisis and prevented its recurrence is outlined. Such post facto learning by the teacher fosters the activity of the intuitive and cognitive processes in him, and permits him to form new perceptions of the teaching process.