ABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: Understanding whether medical students feel safe in mental health placements is important to delivering effective and engaging training experiences. METHOD: Second year students completed anonymous online surveys before (n = 37) and after (n = 41) mental health placements, to gather qualitative and quantitative data about their sense of physical and emotional safety, and factors that positively and negatively influenced their experiences. Data were analysed using chi square and content analysis. RESULTS: There was a disparity between students' expectations of physical and emotional safety before placements and their actual experience. Following placement, no students reported that they felt physically 'unsafe' or 'very unsafe'. Conversely, over 20% of students indicated that they had felt emotionally unsafe during their placement. When asked to compare their expectations prior to placement with their actual experience, over 13% felt 'much less safe' emotionally, where no participants felt 'much less safe' physically. Qualitative content identified included exposure to patients' tragic life stories, aggression, the physical ward environment and adequacy of supports. CONCLUSIONS: The distinction between physical and emotional safety is a valuable framework through which to understand the student experience of clinical placements in psychiatry and to seek to best support students. The data provide rich insight into students' experiences, particularly emotional challenges, on psychiatry wards.
Subject(s)
Emotions , Psychiatry/education , Safety , Students, Medical/psychology , Workplace , Adult , Clinical Competence , Female , Humans , Male , Perception , Surveys and QuestionnairesSubject(s)
Private Sector , Students, Medical , Education, Medical , Humans , Schools, Medical , TeachingSubject(s)
Delivery of Health Care/organization & administration , Environment , Geographic Information Systems , Health Services Research/methods , Mental Health Services/organization & administration , Mental Health , Social Environment , Humans , Mental Disorders/etiology , Mental Disorders/therapyABSTRACT
OBJECTIVE: In view of the growing disease burden of mental disorders, we consider the pressing need to update medical school psychiatry education to better equip doctors to recognise and treat these conditions. Key challenges to the delivery of medical school mental health curricula, and possible directions for reform, are reviewed with the aims of stimulating collaboration and enhancing the efficiency across schools. CONCLUSIONS: In Australia, medical school expansion provides opportunities to prepare many training doctors to meet growing mental health care needs. Despite this, published reviews of practice and curriculum models are notably lacking. Australia, unlike other countries, has yet to agree on a core curriculum in medical school psychiatry, with practices varying widely between schools. Curricula should equip doctors to better recognise and treat common mental disorders during early stages, as well as preparing some for specialist psychiatry training. High-quality, multidisciplinary teaching in varied clinical settings may boost teaching resources. Additionally, medical education provides opportunities to better equip doctors to take care of their own mental health. Key challenges are to achieve a consensus on core curricula across Australian medical schools, and an appropriate proportion of medical school curriculum time for mental disorders, relative to their complexity and large disease burden.
