Therapeutic Assignments: Structured Framework for Interaction Between Medical Students and Patients on Psychiatry Clerkships

Medical students enjoy high level of patient contact on psychiatric clerkships. They have felt that forming a relationship with a patient can have therapeutic effects by imparting hope, decreasing their isolation and providing individualized attention. However students have encountered difficulties forming alliance with their patients, either due to acuity of illness such as psychosis or due to character pathology, addiction etc. They need to feel comfortable dealing with more difficult situations such as extremes of emotion or breaks with reality. Interviewing skills must be continually developed. We hope that Therapeutic Assignments (TA) will: provide a medium for students to improve their interviewing skills; enhance their comfort around communicating with patients about sensitive topics; form a therapeutic alliance with their patients, which will support the growth of empathy and be an important aspect in the patient’s treatment