Undergraduate psychiatric education: current situation and way forward

Gaia Sampogna; Hussien Elkholy; Franziska Baessler; Bulent Coskun; Mariana Pinto da Costa; Rodrigo Ramalho; Florian Riese; Andrea Fiorillo

doi:10.1192/bji.2021.48

Undergraduate psychiatric education: current situation and way forward

BJPsych Int. 2022 May;19(2):34-36. doi: 10.1192/bji.2021.48.

Authors

Gaia Sampogna¹, Hussien Elkholy², Franziska Baessler³, Bulent Coskun⁴, Mariana Pinto da Costa⁵, Rodrigo Ramalho⁶, Florian Riese⁷, Andrea Fiorillo⁸

Affiliations

¹ MD, PhD, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Campania 'L. Vanvitelli', Naples, Italy. Email gaia.sampogna@gmail.com.
² MBBCh, MSc, MD, MRCPsych, Associate Professor and Consultant of Psychiatry, Neurology and Psychiatry Department, Faculty of Medicine, Ain Shams University, Cairo, Egypt.
³ Dr, MME, Department of General Internal and Psychosomatic Medicine, Center for Psychosocial Medicine, Heidelberg University Hospital, Germany.
⁴ Retired Faculty Member, Kocaeli University Medical School, Basiskele, Kocaeli, Turkey.
⁵ MD, MSc, PhD, Consultant Psychiatrist at South London and Maudsley NHS Foundation Trust and Senior Lecturer at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology & Neuroscience, King's College London, London, UK.
⁶ MD (Psychiatry), PhD, Department of Social and Community Health, School of Population Health, University of Auckland, New Zealand.
⁷ MD, Research Fellow, University Research Priority Program (URPP) Dynamics of Healthy Aging, University of Zurich, Switzerland.
⁸ MD, PhD, Full Professor of Psychiatry, Department of Psychiatry, University of Campania 'L. Vanvitelli', Naples, Italy.

Abstract

Undergraduate psychiatric education is essential for the training of medical students and for their recruitment into psychiatry. A significant shortage of graduates choosing a career in psychiatry has been recently documented, and this trend might have many causes. When medical students have positive experiences of teaching, elective placements and exposure to psychiatric patients, their attitudes towards psychiatry are significantly better. Therefore, there is a need to improve the quality of undergraduate training courses in psychiatry. Innovative teaching strategies are suggested, including the use of movies, virtual reality, simulated patients and multiprofessional training wards.

Keywords: Education and training; mental health; psychiatric education; psychiatry programmes; recruitment.

Publication types

Review