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Aligning an undergraduate psychological medicine subject with the mental health needs of the local region

Overview of attention for article published in BMC Medical Education, May 2018
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Title
Aligning an undergraduate psychological medicine subject with the mental health needs of the local region
Published in
BMC Medical Education, May 2018
DOI 10.1186/s12909-018-1192-4
Pubmed ID
Authors

Christopher Rikard-Bell, Torres Woolley

Abstract

The James Cook University (JCU) medical school recently revised its Year 2 human development and behaviour module to be more relevant and practical for students, and more aligned with the mental health priorities of the local region (north Queensland). This study reports medical students' level of preparedness conferred by the re-designed 'Psychological Medicine and Human Development' (PMHD) subject for their later 4-week, rural clinical placement in Year 2. Non-randomized, controlled 'naturalistic' study with pre- and post-intervention surveys. The patient mental health experiences of Year 2 students who went on clinical placement after undertaking the PMHD subject were compared to those who went on placement before undertaking PMHD. A total of 209 JCU Year 2 medical students completed surveys from a possible 217 (response rate = 96%). Compared to students whom had not taken PMHD before going on placement, students going on placement after undertaking PMHD were significantly more likely to report: feeling comfortable discussing mental health issues with patients (p = 0.001); being prepared for mental health discussions with patients (p < 0.001); having an actual mental health discussion with a patient (p < 0.001); and, volunteering an opinion on the appropriateness of their supervising doctor's response (p < 0.001). Students reported subject content involving information and classroom instruction on assessing and interviewing patients for mental illness to be of most use. Providing medical students with psychological medicine information on locally prevalent mental health conditions plus practical classroom experiences in conducting mental state exams better prepares them for interacting with patients experiencing psychological distress. This novel methodology - aligning formal teaching in a subject with an evaluation utilizing a proximate student placement to provide useful feedback on the curriculum content and assess the relevance of the material taught - could be used to revise other content areas of a medical course to be more locally relevant and practically focused, and then to evaluate the success of this revision.

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Mendeley readers

Mendeley readers

The data shown below were compiled from readership statistics for 75 Mendeley readers of this research output. Click here to see the associated Mendeley record.

Geographical breakdown

Country Count As %
Unknown 75 100%

Demographic breakdown

Readers by professional status Count As %
Student > Master 9 12%
Researcher 6 8%
Other 5 7%
Student > Doctoral Student 4 5%
Professor 4 5%
Other 12 16%
Unknown 35 47%
Readers by discipline Count As %
Medicine and Dentistry 12 16%
Psychology 7 9%
Nursing and Health Professions 4 5%
Social Sciences 4 5%
Chemistry 2 3%
Other 6 8%
Unknown 40 53%
Attention Score in Context

Attention Score in Context

This research output has an Altmetric Attention Score of 1. This is our high-level measure of the quality and quantity of online attention that it has received. This Attention Score, as well as the ranking and number of research outputs shown below, was calculated when the research output was last mentioned on 03 June 2018.
All research outputs
#17,974,941
of 23,083,773 outputs
Outputs from BMC Medical Education
#2,646
of 3,383 outputs
Outputs of similar age
#239,448
of 331,171 outputs
Outputs of similar age from BMC Medical Education
#69
of 87 outputs
Altmetric has tracked 23,083,773 research outputs across all sources so far. This one is in the 19th percentile – i.e., 19% of other outputs scored the same or lower than it.
So far Altmetric has tracked 3,383 research outputs from this source. They typically receive a little more attention than average, with a mean Attention Score of 6.4. This one is in the 17th percentile – i.e., 17% of its peers scored the same or lower than it.
Older research outputs will score higher simply because they've had more time to accumulate mentions. To account for age we can compare this Altmetric Attention Score to the 331,171 tracked outputs that were published within six weeks on either side of this one in any source. This one is in the 22nd percentile – i.e., 22% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.
We're also able to compare this research output to 87 others from the same source and published within six weeks on either side of this one. This one is in the 1st percentile – i.e., 1% of its contemporaries scored the same or lower than it.