The education of medicine In both undergraduate and postgraduate courses has been an important issue in any periods and places since the beginning of medical education. Particularly the education of psychiatry and neurology has had more complex problems in terms of it´s diverse aspects in various regions and cultures.
Hence, in Korea the edequate and rational way of teaching psychiatry and neurology have been discussed by some teaching staffs of psychiatry and neurology in these several years. Furthermore the curricula for neuropsychiatric lecture and clerkship activities have . been changed gradually in some Korean medical schools.
In this sense, the authors tried to survey the present status of neuropsychiatric education in undergraduate course of medical college in Korea. The detail curricular schedules of neuropsychiatric lecture and clerkship in 13 Korean medical schools (among 14) were obtained from March, 1976 till May, 1976, by the the way of visiting and interview and were analyzed as the followings. The data summarized below are those of year 1975-1976.
1) The total lecture hours for psychiatry were distributed between 53 and 130 during medical course and were 97.38 on average. In terms of lecture contents, the average lecture hours for general remarks were 35.77 (36.7%) and for the special treatise were 61.01 (63.3%).
2) The clerkship hours for psychiatry were distributed between 36 and 160 during medical course and 80.46 on an average. (40 hours per week) Total hours for psychiatric lectures and clerkships were 177.85 on an average. And the ratio of lecture and clerkship hours were 54.75% and 45.25%.
3) In most medical schools?. the psychiatric lectures began in the first quarter of sophomore class and the clerkship activities were carried out during senior class.
4) The psychiatric clerkship activities were made mainly in the psychiatric ward with little exception in the out patient clinic. The contents of clerkship activities were composed of assignments of cases, discussions of cases, lectures and ward roundings. And the final evaluation of clerkship activities were made of attendance rates, discussions of cases, verbal examinations and written reports.
5) The average credits of psychiatry were 7 and occupied 3.64% of all medical credits.
6) The average numbers of full-time teaching staffs in the department of neuropsychiatry were 3.23 and the ratio of teaching staffs and 1 class students were 1 and 28.1.
7) Among 13, only 2 medical schools had independent department of neurology. In 5 medical schools the lectures for neurology were given by psychiatric staffs and in another by visiting neurologic staffs. And the average lecture hours for neurology were 24 throughout medical course.
8) The psychiatric textbook used most frequently was ´Kolb´s Modern Clinical Psychiatry´ and the next ´Kaplan´s Synopsis of Comprehensive Textbook of Psychiatry".
9) The number of in-patients assigned to the students during clerkship activities were 20 on an average.
10) The followings were proposed as difficult problems or to be cerrected for adequate and rational neurepsychiatric education by most of teaching staffs: deficit in the number of full-time teaching staffs, teaching materials and equipments, ineffective clerkship activities, uncontrolled standard of curricula, lack of adequate textbooks, insufficient education for neurology and poor understanding of other departments, administrators and so on.
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