Assessment and feedback to medical undergraduate during Psychiatry posting in India: Challenges and opportunities
Dear Editor,
Psychiatry is an optional subject in the medical undergraduate curriculum in India. For a long period of time, undergraduate psychiatry teaching and training remained ignored in India. Paucity of psychiatry teachers, overburden of clinical work on the existing teachers of psychiatry, poor motivation in students and teachers, stigma related to psychiatry remained the major roadblocks in undergraduate psychiatry teaching and training in India.
An important element of psychiatry teaching and training to undergraduates is doing formative assessments and providing feedback to the students. Assessment and feedback are expected to improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching. Feedback and assessment can be periodic or continuous. Continuous assessment is a more exhaustive and burdensome procedure but is expected to give more effective reflection of the learning. Considering this fact most of the institutes consider periodic assessment and feedback.
Recently, the National Medical Commission (formerly Medical Council of India) has introduced competency based medical education for the undergraduate students in India [1,2]. This is a highly welcome step and is expected to strengthen the undergraduate medical education including learning of psychiatry in India. This structured medical education program focusses on enhancing knowledges, skills, attitude, values, responsiveness and communication of the medical undergraduate students [2].
However, during the clinical postings of students (which is for a duration of 2 weeks with 3 hours of posting each day) in psychiatry, poor attendances have been reported very frequently as psychiatry is not a mainstream subject and the students attending the class on a particular day may remain absent on the next day, which interrupts the continuous training process. Sometimes it may also happen that a different teacher takes the formative assessment at the end of posting and gives feedback about the clinical posting in psychiatry. This may happen in institutes, where a greater number of faculties in psychiatry are present and each faculty takes one or two bed side teachings. So, the teacher who takes the assessment of the students often remains unaware of the learning of the students in all the classes. In such a scenario, providing feedback on daily basis may be more useful. Similarly, use of digital technology in doing assessment and feedback may be more useful as the documentation will be less cumbersome.
Rapid Response:
Assessment and feedback to medical undergraduate during Psychiatry posting in India: Challenges and opportunities
Dear Editor,
Psychiatry is an optional subject in the medical undergraduate curriculum in India. For a long period of time, undergraduate psychiatry teaching and training remained ignored in India. Paucity of psychiatry teachers, overburden of clinical work on the existing teachers of psychiatry, poor motivation in students and teachers, stigma related to psychiatry remained the major roadblocks in undergraduate psychiatry teaching and training in India.
An important element of psychiatry teaching and training to undergraduates is doing formative assessments and providing feedback to the students. Assessment and feedback are expected to improve the quality and effectiveness of teaching. Feedback and assessment can be periodic or continuous. Continuous assessment is a more exhaustive and burdensome procedure but is expected to give more effective reflection of the learning. Considering this fact most of the institutes consider periodic assessment and feedback.
Recently, the National Medical Commission (formerly Medical Council of India) has introduced competency based medical education for the undergraduate students in India [1,2]. This is a highly welcome step and is expected to strengthen the undergraduate medical education including learning of psychiatry in India. This structured medical education program focusses on enhancing knowledges, skills, attitude, values, responsiveness and communication of the medical undergraduate students [2].
However, during the clinical postings of students (which is for a duration of 2 weeks with 3 hours of posting each day) in psychiatry, poor attendances have been reported very frequently as psychiatry is not a mainstream subject and the students attending the class on a particular day may remain absent on the next day, which interrupts the continuous training process. Sometimes it may also happen that a different teacher takes the formative assessment at the end of posting and gives feedback about the clinical posting in psychiatry. This may happen in institutes, where a greater number of faculties in psychiatry are present and each faculty takes one or two bed side teachings. So, the teacher who takes the assessment of the students often remains unaware of the learning of the students in all the classes. In such a scenario, providing feedback on daily basis may be more useful. Similarly, use of digital technology in doing assessment and feedback may be more useful as the documentation will be less cumbersome.
References
1. MCI. COMPETENCY BASED UNDERGRADUATE CURRICULUM FOR THE INDIAN MEDICAL GRADUATE 2018. Published online 2018. Accessed December 8, 2021. https://www.nmc.org.in/information-desk/for-colleges/ug-curriculum/
2. MCI. Assessment Module for Undergraduate Medical Education 2019. Published online 2019. Accessed December 8, 2021. https://www.nmc.org.in/wp-content/uploads/2020/08/Module_Competence_base...
Competing interests: No competing interests