The opinion:
This commentary makes a coherent and structured argument on the important role inpatient consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry rotations can play for medical student development. The authors argue for the C-L psychiatry service to be a centerpiece for the medical student psychiatry experience. This is emphasized by the unique focus on symptom management over diagnosis, triaging psychiatric symptom severity, the interdisciplinary collaboration, and opportunities to learn from simultaneously interesting and common presentations. One limitation of the authors’ proposal is that it does not account for the various ways individual psychiatrists who function in C-L settings may practice, and that ensuring consistent clinical exposure would be difficult. The authors take a surprising stance and create a hierarchy between inpatient psychiatry services and C-L psychiatry services, when in fact, a cogent argument exists on the incredibly important function of exposure to acute psychiatric care for students who will go on to practice in a variety of settings. The conversation on ideal rotation experiences can and should involve data gathering across multiple institutions, across multiple psychiatric rotation experiences, and with longitudinal follow up after medical students graduate into residency and into their eventual practices of choice. Lacking those data, this commentary takes a narrow and overly confident position on the potential for inpatient C-L psychiatry services to provide diverse and relevant educational experiences for medical students.