The selection of a psychiatric curriculum for medical students: results of a survey.

A survey of 131 psychologists, psychiatrists, and nonpsychiatrist physicians taken to determine what doctors of medicine should know about psychiatry revealed that of the 21 topics assessed, there was a significant intergroup agreement on the 10 most important and the 5 least important topics. Interviewing, suicide evaluation, the chronically ill or dying patient, and psychiatric referral received high ratings by each group, and psychoanalytic theory, psychodynamics, and mental retardation received uniformly low ratings. The authors believe that these findings provide useful information for planning an undergraduate curriculum in psychiatry.