PMID- 17242052 OWN - NLM STAT- MEDLINE DCOM- 20070320 LR - 20151119 IS - 1042-9670 (Print) IS - 1042-9670 (Linking) VI - 31 IP - 1 DP - 2007 Jan-Feb TI - Are medical students assigning proper global assessment of functioning scores? PG - 51-6 AB - OBJECTIVE: This article seeks to determine whether medical students can estimate the appropriate score for the Global Assessment of Functioning (GAF) compared with psychiatry residents and staff psychiatrists. The authors hypothesized that medical students' estimations of GAF scores for patients in clinical vignettes would differ from those assessed by the psychiatry residents and staff psychiatrists. METHOD: The authors designed a cross-sectional confidential survey of medical students, psychiatry residents, and staff psychiatrists. Consenting participants were asked to provide demographic information and then complete the accompanying questionnaire after reading two vignettes. One of the vignettes described a depressed patient and the other a psychotic patient. The subjects were asked to estimate the GAF scores for the patients in both vignettes. Then the subjects were given the GAF scoring guide to review and were asked to re-assess their initial GAF scores for the patients in the vignettes. RESULTS: Medical students assigned much higher GAF scores for the patient in the vignette with less severe symptoms than the psychiatry residents and staff psychiatrists. The GAF scores of all three groups for the patient in the vignette with more severe symptoms were comparable. CONCLUSIONS: The ability of medical students to assign proper GAF scores needs to be studied further. Our study suggests that current 1-month rotations in psychiatry, without specific training on assigning GAF scores, may not provide medical students with enough information to assess GAF scores accurately. This might need to be addressed in psychiatry clerkships. FAU - Warsi, Mustafa K AU - Warsi MK AD - Omaha VA Medical Center, Omaha, Nebraska, USA. syed.sattar@med.va.gov FAU - Sattar, S Pirzada AU - Sattar SP FAU - Din, Amad U AU - Din AU FAU - Petty, Frederick AU - Petty F FAU - Padala, Prasad R AU - Padala PR LA - eng PT - Comparative Study PT - Journal Article PL - United States TA - Acad Psychiatry JT - Academic psychiatry : the journal of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training and the Association for Academic Psychiatry JID - 8917200 SB - IM MH - Activities of Daily Living/*classification/psychology MH - Analysis of Variance MH - *Clinical Competence MH - Cross-Sectional Studies MH - Depressive Disorder/diagnosis/psychology MH - Humans MH - Internship and Residency/statistics & numerical data MH - Nebraska MH - Psychiatric Status Rating Scales/*statistics & numerical data MH - Psychiatry/*education/standards MH - Psychotic Disorders/diagnosis/psychology MH - Severity of Illness Index MH - Students, Medical/*statistics & numerical data MH - Surveys and Questionnaires EDAT- 2007/01/24 09:00 MHDA- 2007/03/21 09:00 CRDT- 2007/01/24 09:00 PHST- 2007/01/24 09:00 [pubmed] PHST- 2007/03/21 09:00 [medline] PHST- 2007/01/24 09:00 [entrez] AID - 31/1/51 [pii] AID - 10.1176/appi.ap.31.1.51 [doi] PST - ppublish SO - Acad Psychiatry. 2007 Jan-Feb;31(1):51-6. doi: 10.1176/appi.ap.31.1.51.