What Psychology do Medical Students Need to Know? An Evidence Based Approach to Curriculum Development

Abstract While the contribution of behavioural and social sciences for understanding health, illness and medical practice is made explicit in documents such as Tomorrow’s Doctors, research shows that the proportion of curriculum space given to psychology in undergraduate curricula varies widely between medical schools. In the US, recommendations for behavioural sciences education for medical undergraduates have been developed. However, the United Kingdom has yet to produce agreed curriculum outcomes for behavioural sciences in medical education. We aimed to develop an evidence-based consensus behavioural sciences curriculum for undergraduate medical education. This paper reports a novel technique for curriculum development that utilises knowledge and expertise of key stakeholders from medicine, medical education and behavioural sciences. It was successfully used to develop a psychology core curriculum for undergraduate medicine in the UK.