The Psychological Care of Medical Patients: A Challenge for Undergraduate Medical Education

A recent joint report by the Royal College of Physicians and the Royal College of Psychiatrists has argued the case for improving the psychological and psychiatric care of medical patients. It makes a number of suggestions about staff education and training but does not specifically address undergraduate medical teaching. Following recommendations by the General Medical Council, UK medical schools are reorganising their undergraduate curricula with a new emphasis on equipping students for the preregistration year. These two important sets of recommendations present a challenge to medical education. In this article we report on a meeting which considered what the newly qualified doctor needs to know about psychological and psychiatric aspects of general patient care, how far the current psychiatric curriculum meets those needs, and how it could be improved.