Medical students attend to case-based psychosocial information - A prospective study

The authors describe a prospective study of medical students' identificatio n of the presence and importance of psychosocial information. They investig ated the development of these skills over time in two successive academic c ohorts, exploring the potential relationship of students' performance on a cue-identification task to their self-reported interest in patients' psycho social concerns and to their academic performance in medical school. The ab solute number of psychosocial cites students identified varied with the stu dents' training, but the importance that the students attributed to psychos ocial cues increased over the time of their training. Their recognition of psychosocial cites as important correlated with academic performance in adv anced clerkships and election to Alpha Omega Alpha. The results suggest tha t students are able to attend to psychosocial issues while performing well on traditional biomedical education measures.