UNDERGRADUATE EDUCATION

Welcome to Psychiatry Course 462 (the Clinical Psychiatry Course)! We hope that you will find an enjoyable and stimulating educational experience as you browse this page.

Academic excellence is one of the primary missions of the department. We are focused on giving our students and trainees the best possible education for them to have a successful career in the field of healthcare and medicine. We are also committed to ensuring that our students have a high-quality learning experience whatever their degree program is. This course aims to study psychiatry as one of the most rapidly growing specialties of medicine in our country and in the world. Thus, you will learn basic psychiatric knowledge and clinical skills that will enable you to function at the level of primary care and emergency psychiatry, and will take safe decisions when assessing and treating psychiatric patients. This will be accomplished through a variety of educational activities and varied clinical experiences. 

OBJECTIVES:

To provide the undergraduate medical students with 1-knowledge 2-attitude 3-clinical skills relevant to clinical psychiatry and essential for their future career as non-psychiatric clinicians in whatever specialization they choose.

1. Knowledge:

To acquire basic essential facts in clinical psychiatry that includes:

a. Phenomenological psychopathology (signs and symptoms) of psychiatric disorders.

b. Classification and etiology in clinical psychiatry (bio-psycho-social).

c. Common psychiatric disorders:

• Clinical features and course.
• Epidemiology and etiology.
• Differential diagnosis.
• Treatment (bio-psycho-social) and prognosis.

d. Treatment modalities in psychiatry:

• Physical: pharmacotherapy, electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) and others.
• Psychological: behavioral, cognitive, supportive psychotherapy and others.

2. Attitude:

To develop the scientific attitude towards:

a. Psychiatric patients and their families

b. Psychiatric interventions (bio-psycho-social)

c. Mental health and providers (psychiatrists, psychologists, social workers and others)

d. Psychiatry as a branch of medicine.

3. Clinical Skills:

 a. To conduct a full psychiatric interview with:

• Proper interview techniques and skills.
• Sufficient psychiatric history.
• Standard “mental state examination”. 

b. To present a diagnostic formulation for common psychiatric disorders based on the most recent classificatory systems in psychiatry. 

c. To set an outline of a management plan for common psychiatric disorders following the bio-psycho-social approach (both short and long term).

d. To assess and appropriately refer psychiatric patients in the primary care settings. 

f.  To assess and deal competently and safely with psychiatric emergencies.

g. To assess and dispose properly consultation-liaison cases.

COURSE OVERVIEW 

The course lasts for 6 weeks (including consolidation and examination weeks) during which varieties of educational activities are conducted to fulfill the objectives of the course with great emphasis on the applied clinical psychiatry.

These activities are namely:

• Cognitive Disorders Theme
• Psychotic Disorders Theme
• Mood Disorders Theme
• Anxiety Disorders Theme
• Child Psychiatry Theme
• Clinical Activities (in-patient, outpatient, consultation-liaison, child psychiatry) include clinical cases log with a help of an assigned supervisor.

LIST OF ACTIVITIES : Lectures, Clinical Cases (Inpatients and Outpatients), Case Study, Video Cases and others. 

FACULTY

Most of our faculty members have international and local academic experience. Some are even chaired professors, novelists and leaders in the field of Psychiatry. 

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