Improving residents' performance on the PRITE: is there a role for peer-assisted learning?

OBJECTIVE

The authors implemented a peer-assisted learning approach to prepare residents for the Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Examination (PRITE), with the goal of increasing test performance.

METHOD

The authors developed a PRITE review curriculum utilizing a peer-assisted learning approach. The residents were randomly assigned to teams and instructed to teach assigned topic(s). The participants' PRITE scores before and after the intervention were compared with the PRITE scores of the previous residents.

RESULTS

PGY-2 residents achieved the highest psychiatry percentile increase, and PGY-3 residents achieved the highest psychiatry percentile in the past 7 years. PGY-4 residents' psychiatry percentile decreased, although two residents from the previous year left for a fellowship, and the program accepted one PGY-4 transfer. All of the groups' neurology percentile increased, but were not substantially different from the previous years.

CONCLUSION

Our preliminary study has shown that implementing a peer-learning strategy to prepare residents for the PRITE is feasible and may lead to promising results.