The junior-year psychiatric clerkship and medical students' interest in psychiatry

The authors present results for a 5-year period, from 1994 to 1998, of medi cal students' interest in specializing in psychiatry after the junior-year psychiatric clerkship and their actual decisions to specialize in psychiatr y. The student-reported survey results, NRMP matching data, and internal ho use-staff records showed that students rotating through an outpatient setti ng for their psychiatric clerkship reported significantly greater interest in specializing in psychiatry than students rotating through the emergency room, a children's hospital, or inpatient or consultation/liaison setting. Of the factors examined in this study, the site of the clerkship and the ro tation time-of-year were not associated with the choice of psychiatry as a specialty, whereas the strongest predictor of eventual specialization in ps ychiatry was post-clerkship attitudes.