Training medical students from Israel and abroad

Professor Michael Foirobski - in charge of the instruction of medical students at Maale Hacarmel Mental Health Medical Center.
 
As part of the academic collaboration between Maale Hacarmel Mental Health Medical Center and the Faculty of Medicine at the Technion, once a year three groups of medical students arrive to study at the hospital in a "clerkship" format. Two groups of Israeli students and one group of students from the United States, within the Teams Program. The medical students are at their fifth school year and this forms their first exposure to the psychiatric wards and psychiatric patients in general.
 
During their stay at the hospital, that lasts five weeks per group, they attend lectures designed to educate them on psychopathology, the diseases and the treatment in the field of mental disorders and post hospitalization rehabilitation. The lectures are provided by a team of physicians and clinical psychologists from the hospital.

 
At the same time with the lectures the students are assigned to the various wards: The adult ward, psycho-geriatrics, Youth ward, and clinics, where they observe patient interviews and interview patients themselves.
 
A unique feature of psychiatry instruction is its combination of experiential teaching and frontal teaching, while maintaining the principle of "teaching by the patient's bedside". 

 
The studied theoretical material is presented in the context of exposure to patients with a variety of syndromes, and various treatment methods, including: Medication, psychotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy, rehabilitative interventions and other treatments.
 
The entire wards' staffs contribute to teaching about the diseases, the medications, and the treatment to patients as people and not as diseased individuals. The staff must remain very patient towards the "guests" throughout the entire 15 weeks of clerkship every year. It is necessary to acknowledge their lack of knowledge about psychiatric issues, to answer their questions, to understand their emerging fears towards patients in general and psychiatric patients in particular.
 
The students must be assigned with, beyond the theoretical study contents, a therapeutic approach of seeing the patient as a person and not as a disease, treating the person and not just the disease's symptoms.

 
We seek that medical students will adopt this approach in future in every clinical field in which they are to practice as doctors.
 

At the end of the clerkship, the students take a final exam that includes presenting a patient they received on their own at the ward, a full intake, a differentiating diagnosis, treatment and prognosis, including being tested on the theoretical material.