Teaching integrated behavioral health in a primary care clerkship

Background: Most behavioral health care is actually delivered by primary care physicians. Primary care clerkship students have a unique opportunity to learn about behavioral health and the integrated care model. Integrated care is an effective multidisciplinary model for delivering high quality care. Purpose: Evaluate the efficacy of a brief curriculum in increasing students' knowledge regarding common behavioral health issues. Methods: We designed an interactive, 90-minute curriculum to introduce students to the unique model of integrated care, and to build skills in addressing a number of common behavioral health issues. Each problem is presented from both the medical and behavioral perspective. We evaluated this intervention with a pre- and post-clerkship test assessing knowledge regarding behavioral health care. Results: There was significant improvement on the overall score and on seven of eight individual questions. Conclusions: This curriculum is an effective intervention for introducing integrated care and increasing knowledge of several common behavioral problems.