A Resident Initiated Prite Review Course: Trials and Tribulations

The expe rie nce of developing a review course to study for th e Psychia t ry Residen t 's In-T ra ining Exam (PRITE) is d iscussed. Resid ents in our program felt that th e review course was usefu l with re sp ect to th e following: studying for the PRIT E; future study for National Boa rds; and learning of new mat eri al. The Psychi atry Resident 's In-T ra ining Exam (p RITE) was developed in 1979 as a mechanism to assess the knowledge ba se of psychiatric resid ents in a sta ndardized format (1,2,3). The exa m was origina lly designed to simulat e th e Am erican Board of Psychiat ry and Ne urology (ABPN) examina t ion, PART I, a nd has ga ine d widespread acce ptance despite questions ab out it s ability to accurat ely tes t or reflect the know ledge of th e exa minee (1,4,5) . Principles derived from a syst em for se lf-educa t ion of resid ents publ ish ed by Taylor and Torrey (6) were a pplied to a review course developed at thi s inst it u t ion to improve th e knowledge base of each resid en t with th e goal of incr easing pe rforma nce on th e PRITE a nd, ultimately, ABPN exa m Part I. This pap er discusses the review course from its conception to fina l eva lua t ion with views offered from th e organize rs, th e resid en cy direct or, a nd th e resid ents tau ght by thi s method . It was hypoth esized th at most participants would feel th at th e review course was useful in stu dying for th e PRITE exa m and th at those who had ac t ive ly particip ated (i.e., mad e a handout or gave a lect ure) wou ld feel th e review course was more useful th an th ose who were pa ssive participants.