“Die Medizinische Psychologie brachte uns dazu,die richtigen Fragen zu stellen”: Studentische Evaluation eines praxis- und forschungsorientierten Seminars

Objectives: Starting point of our medical psychology education concept were reflections about which professional skills medical students should acquire. As medicine is a practical discipline striving for good clinical practice, power of judgement and research competence are key contents of medical education. In this study, we examined the student reception of a practiceand research-oriented seminar.

Method: In our curriculum, students examined a psychological problem area by interacting with a simulation patient, and professionally presented a research project on a student congress. Participants were 193 second-year medical students who evaluated four educational objectives and eight teaching methods by questionnaire.

Results: The students felt encouraged to engage in self-reflexion. They considered knowledge about medical psychology as rather important for medical education, but doubted its practicability. The acquisition of communication skills via interpersonal experiences was evaluated very positively, while achievements in research skills were reflected upon rather sceptically. Accordingly, interaction with simulated patients was the most and the student congress was the least preferred teaching method. The more students were engaged in acquiring communication skills, the more they benefitted from simulation patients, the research project, the student congress, lecturer instructions, and students’ own seminar presentation.

Conclusions: Promoting power of judgement and research competence as well as dealing with different teaching methods are high demands on medical students. The student reception of our curriculum encourages and support the incorporation of interpersonal training in communicative skills as well as working on an independently developed scientific problem into medical psychological teaching.