Quality of education at multidisciplinary case conferences in psychiatry

A large Dublin-based teaching hospital facilitates a weekly Psychiatric Case Presentation meeting, which is relatively unique in medicine and even in psychiatry, in that there is a large variety of attendees from various multidisciplinary groups: consultant psychiatrists, psychiatric trainees, nurses, psychologists and psychoanalytic psychotherapists, occupational therapists, social workers and pastoral care staff. The aim of this audit is to assess the quality of education for members of different disciplines at these meetings, and to highlight the differing learning needs of the attendees.

Group-structured assessments and Likert scale questionnaires were used to identify what attendees thought were educational and what needed to be improved.

Overall, the case conference is educationally worthwhile but there were several areas of dissatisfaction. Some felt that the case conference was overly medical in its orientation and that there was excessive medical jargon. The seating arrangements were not conducive to group discussion. Consultants and psychiatric trainees felt that the quality of the clinical presentations could be improved. Presentation skills teaching classes and topic-based classes would be useful inclusions. Feedback to the multidisciplinary group on the patients' progress and feedback to the patient is important. Changes were implemented in areas of dissatisfaction, and these changes evaluated.

The educational qualities of multidisciplinary Case Conferences need to be constantly evaluated to ensure that the learning needs of the different disciplines who attend are being met.