What do medical students learn in the elective course in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry?

Objective: A course in child and adolescent psychiatry and psychotherapy is optional for medical students within the Medical Curriculum Munich (MeCuMLMU). Aims of the course are to give insight into the specialty of child and adolescent psychiatry and to help students acquire basic skills. The focus is on psychopathology and on communication skills. Method: A course comprising 23 teaching units and limited to twelve students is taught over four days within one week twice per semester. Child and Adolescent Psychiatry is introduced by means of case presentations of children in different age groups, each with externalizing, and internalizing disorders and with developmental delay, and by a clinical round in the teaching hospital affiliated to the University. Case examples of children are presented by video. In group discussions guided by a teacher students learn to formulate a psychopathological status. Role-plays derived from the clinical examples and video-based feed-back provides students with the opportunity to improve their communication skills. Results: The course is evaluated by means of a written examination, in which a psychopathological status must be written down independently. Students and teachers evaluate the seminar in a structured way. Videotapes of the role-plays are analyzed by the teachers after the course. In a sub-sample, a follow-up evaluation was carried out six months later. Conclusions: The seminar offers an excellent opportunity to introduce medical students to child and adolescent psychiatry and to recruit and inspire a future generation of child and adolescent psychiatrists.