Undergraduate psychiatric education: current situation and way forward.

Undergraduate psychiatric education is essential for the training of medical students and for their recruitment into psychiatry. A significant shortage of graduates choosing a career in psychiatry has been recently documented, and this trend might have many causes. When medical students have positive experiences of teaching, elective placements and exposure to psychiatric patients, their attitudes towards psychiatry are significantly better. Therefore, there is a need to improve the quality of undergraduate training courses in psychiatry. Innovative teaching strategies are suggested, including the use of movies, virtual reality, simulated patients and multiprofessional training wards.
Competing Interests: F.B. is supported by an Olympia Morata fellowship of the Medical Faculty, University of Heidelberg. F.R. received a speaker's honorarium by Merz and Vifor Pharma unrelated to this work. E.H. and M.P.d.C. are members of the BJPsych Bulletin editorial board and did not take part in the review or decision-making process of this paper
(© The Author(s) 2021.)