Assessment in undergraduate psychiatric education.

An assessment of medical students' psychiatric performance demonstrated no association between the ability to rate psychopathology or to observe interview behaviour and traditional written methods of academic achievement. This is in accordance with those few studies which have addressed this issue and indicates that there may well be at least three independent skills involved in clinical decision-making: the ability to engage in interpersonal interaction and elicit information; and the ability to acquire and use academic knowledge. This is consistent with work suggesting that maturational and learning processes influence clinical reasoning, and demonstrates that each component should be addressed in assessing students in psychiatry.