Teaching attitudes in psychiatry in Australasian medical schools.

An essential preliminary to the development of optimal methods in the instruction of psychiatry to undergraduate medical students is the clear specification of educational objectives by the medical educators concerned. Teachers of psychiatry often participate in a training programme characterized by the lack of general goals. A consequence of this confusion in aims is the perplexity of the student as he encounters a range of often contradictory approaches. Students’ attitudes to psychiatry become unfavourable when confronted by psychiatrists who disagree about what to teach and how to teach. Walton (1968), recognizing this problem, applied the questionnaire method to examine the educational objectives of psychiatrists in five British medical schools. It was felt worth while repeating this study among Australasian teachers of psychiatry both to establish the precise nature of the goals adopted by Australasian teachers, and to c o m p a r ~ h e pattern of attitudes found in the two groups. The need for such a study is especially pertinent to medical schools in Australia and New Zealand. Academic status for psychiatry in most of these schools has been achieved only in the last decade and the departments generally are still in their developmental phase. The present investigation thus examines the aims of Australasian teachers of psychiatry and utilizes the methods of Walton for the purpose