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Teaching provision for old age psychiatry in medical schools in the UK and Ireland: a survey

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  02 January 2018

Sophia Bennett*
Affiliation:
Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
Poppy Ilderton
Affiliation:
Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
John T. O'Brien
Affiliation:
University of Cambridge, Cambridge, UK
John-Paul Taylor
Affiliation:
Newcastle University, Newcastle, UK
Andrew Teodorczuk
Affiliation:
Griffith University, Queensland, Australia
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Abstract

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Aims and method

This work builds on a survey first done in 1999 to understand how old age psychiatry teaching is embedded in undergraduate medical schools in the UK and Ireland and the influence of academic old age psychiatrists on teaching processes. We invited deans of 31 medical schools in the UK and Ireland in 2015 to complete an online survey to reassess the situation 16 years later.

Results

Response rate was 74%. As found in the original survey, there was variation across medical schools in how old age psychiatry is taught. Half of schools stated there was not enough space in the curriculum dedicated to old age psychiatry, and not all medical school curricula offered a clinical attachment. Medical schools that involved academic old age psychiatrists in teaching (59%) showed a greater diversity of teaching methods.

Clinical implications

There is a need to recognise the importance of old age psychiatry teaching, with the consensus of opinion continuing to be that more curriculum space needs to be given to old age psychiatry. To achieve this we advocate increasing the number of old age psychiatrists with teaching roles, as relying on academics to teach and lead on curriculum development is challenging given their greater research pressures.

Type
Education & Training
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an open-access article published by the Royal College of Psychiatrists and distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
Copyright © 2017 The Authors

Footnotes

Joint senior authors.

Declaration of interest

None.

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