Psychiatry for tomorrow’s doctors: undergraduate medical education

The importance both of undergraduate education in forming the knowledge base for the next generation of doctors and of their continuing professional development is widely acknowledged. The changes that are occurring to the undergraduate medical curriculum in many countries are therefore likely to have a long-term effect, although their specific effect on psychiatric teaching and the future of psychiatry is not yet apparent. This is of particular significance in the context of a continuing crisis in the recruitment and retention of mental health professionals in general, and of psychiatrists in particular, when the need to attract doctors into the specialty has never been greater (Sierles & Taylor, 1995).