Reflections on psychosomatic medicine as a third-year medical student clerkship: An integrated experience that demonstrates the biopsychosocial model

摘要

The proper place for psychiatry education and experience in the medical school curriculum has evolved over time. Some institutions have limited the time spent on the required third-year psychiatry clinical clerkship to 4 weeks. Most institutions offer a 6-week clerkship, but there have been questions as to whether maintaining this level of experience is viable, given additional curriculum demands (1). Within the clerkship itself, change is "in the air." A traditional experience at many schools has been a clerkship spent entirely at an inpatient facility. Increasingly, there is a call for greater integration of psychiatry and other medical specialties, in addition to clinic-based and longitudinal experiences during clinical clerkships. Diversification of clerkship sites has resulted in opportunities for other models to compete with the familiar inpatient rotation, with similar educational value (2).