How to Involve Undergraduate Medical Students in Psychiatric Research

Abstract

The poster will address the important issue of how we can use opportunities in teaching our medical students how to take a wider view of psychiatry and learn to ‘think outside the box’ thus broadening their vision, enabling them to challenge presently held concepts, while at the same time learning the basic tenets of our profession.

Clearly, this is done by involving our students in clinical research based and audit based activities. However not all schools or teachers are comfortable with doing this, while the medical curriculum is broad, and there is a risk that students ‘only study for exams’.

Research based activities, including simple things such as using basic it skills to do a literature search for a review article or carrying out a useful clinical audit, using a unit held database, are however things which students can easily do, and these can lead to publishable case reports, posters, or ever articles in peer reviewed journals.

The poster will illustrate how we developed research activities with students at Cambridge University Clinical School. It shall discuss the advantages, difficulties, and indeed enjoyment of carrying out such activities.