Evaluating a seminar designed to improve psychiatry skills of family medicine residents.

In an effort to evaluate the effectiveness of a psychiatry seminar designed to teach the principles of psychiatric history taking, diagnosis, and management to first-year family medicine residents, an Objective Structured Clinical Examination (OSCE) and accompanying marking system were designed and used in 1988. The OSCE scores of the family medicine residents who had participated in the psychiatry seminar were significantly higher than the scores of the first-year family medicine residents who had not. The author concludes that this educational format can be effective in teaching psychiatric diagnostic and management skills to first-year family medicine residents, and that further research is necessary to validate the effectiveness of current educational models.