Final and professional MB examination in psychiatry.

Abstract

The undergraduate medical curriculum has recently changed radically or is about to change in many British medical schools, usually within the framework of principles laid down by the ‘Todd’ Committee. Psychiatry has for long been a major medical discipline, for instance employing more consultants than most other hospital specialties excluding general medicine. However, its relation with the rest of hospital medicine is sometimes uneasy, and until recently psychiatrists have worked mainly in isolated hospitals. In the past 25 years this has been less true of teaching hospitals, and within these quite large psychiatric departments have developed. With the exception of Cambridge and six London schools (Charing Cross, Guy’s, King’s College, St Thomas’s, University College, and Westminster hospital medical schools) there are now professorial academic departments in all medical schools. The contributions that psychiatry can make to undergraduate teaching are varied. University teachers of psychiatry have recently expressed their own views in this respect (Association of University Teachers of Psychiatry, 197 1). They see psychiatrists teaching in the field of mental illness and in the field of behavioural science together with others. They also believe that psychiatrists can sometimes contribute to teaching on more general topics together with medical and other colleagues, and they think that psychiatrists are especially equipped to teach students about clinical interview techniques and about psychotherapy. Not all psychiatrists are equipped to teach in such diverse areas, and if the necessary skills are to be available they may need to be specifically recruited within any one department. In 1966 a survey of the extent of undergraduate teaching by psychiatrists revealed