The Educational Value of Student Encounter Logs in a Psychiatry Clerkship

This report examines the educational value of student encounter logs used in a psychiatric clerkship. The concordance between students' recording of encounters and the supervisors' record ranged Sfom 0.33 to 0.49. The log was useful in identijjing some content objectives which were not experienced by a majority of clerks during their rotation. In addition, the log was used to compare experiences across four different settings. These results suggest that student logs can provide accurate information about clinical educational experiences and thus can highlight the strengths and weaknesses of clinical teaching programmes.