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Undergraduate psychiatry teaching should happen in primary care

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Subodh Dave*
Affiliation:
Derbyshire Healthcare NHS Foundation Trust and Honorary Associate Professor, University of Nottingham, UK. Email: subodh.dave@derbyshcft.nhs.uk
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Abstract

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Copyright © Royal College of Psychiatrists, 2015 

Abed & Teodorczuk Reference Abed and Teodorczuk1 make a valid point in their article, but their proposed solution has been advocated for some time and, while it may be a necessary condition to improve undergraduate psychiatric teaching, it is unlikely to be sufficient. Reference Dave, Dogra and Leask2 Training (and psychiatry is not alone in this) is heavily dependent on service configuration for its delivery. As psychiatry has become more community based, it has also become more fragmented. The answer to this lies partly in making educational contracts more transparent, but surely we need a more radical solution. Given that the vast majority of psychiatric morbidity and care occur in primary care and given that most of our medical students will work in non-psychiatric settings, there is an urgent need for most if not all of undergraduate psychiatric education to take place in primary care.

There is an opportunity to deliver this fundamental shift through the changes recommended in the Shape of Training review. Reference Greenway3 The key themes of making medical training more flexible and focused on generalist training, and getting the balance between service provision and training right to ensure that patient needs drive medical training, should lead to a shift of undergraduate psychiatric teaching to primary care. An added benefit of this may be that, for once, the change in the educational tail may wag the service-provision dog, leading to more integrated services at the primary/secondary care interface.

References

1 Abed, R, Teodorczuk, A. Danger ahead: challenges in undergraduate psychiatry teaching and implications for community psychiatry. Br J Psychiatry 2015; 206: 8990.Google Scholar
2 Dave, S, Dogra, N, Leask, S. Current role of service increment for teaching funding in psychiatry. Psychiatrist 2010; 34: 31–5.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 Greenway, D. Securing the Future of Excellent Patient Care: Final report of the independent review. Shape of Training, 2013.Google Scholar
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