Focused psychiatric curriculum selection: student, psychiatrist, and nonpsychiatrist physician expectations

The authors obtained curriculum needs analysis data from second-year medical students and compared these with data obtained from nonpsychiatrist physicians and psychiatrists. All groups felt that interviewing skills, the doctor-patient relationship, managing the dying patient, and evaluation of suicidal patients were important topics. All gave psychological testing, behavior modification, mental retardation, and psychoanalytic theory the lowest teaching priority. The students gave a higher rating to all topics than did the other groups. The authors suggest that this kind of analysis can facilitate curriculum selection and implementation.