Learning objectives

The many experiences that you yourself have already gained during your nursing internships in hospital, during your own illnesses, during night watches, form a broad source material that must always be referred to when it otherwise becomes too theoretical in medical terms. The question "Which behaviours of patients or doctors were particularly incomprehensible/unsympathetic to me personally?" often leads to harder problems than reports of successful understanding.

Medical psychology tries to prepare students to develop an understanding of the needs and the psychological, social and economic situation of the patient as early as the pre-clinical phase. A first step towards this is achieved when the student first learns to recognise the limits of his/her own understanding of individual patient problems.

You notice in yourself or in fellow students that restlessness or silliness, silence or looking away is typical behaviour on certain topics. Another example: you notice that some spokespeople in working groups give others little speaking time. What is behind this? Why such different behaviour? Who is behaving how? How does my behaviour affect others? Another question: You can try out which typical forms of reaction other than the ones you have used so far are successful. Wouldn't it be interesting to try out a bit of self-observation in teaching experiments? The aim of medical psychology is for the student to learn to some extent in the classroom,

• personal needs
• emotional reactions
• socio-psychological phenomena of communication

in themselves and others and to incorporate them appropriately into their behaviour.

It is quite astonishing when you can see for yourself that often at least two independent people are required to record observation data in the human field (examination errors, observation deficiencies...).

• Have you ever asked yourself where the findings come from that the lecturers pass on to you in their lectures?
• How are experiments planned and carried out? Are the results watertight? Are the experimental conditions ethically acceptable?
• Do you believe that psychology only works with "soft", imprecise data, while other subjects in medicine are "hard, pure" science?

The aim of medical psychology is for students to learn how to apply criteria for the assessment of data from various sources of information as a contribution to a general methodological critical faculty. This includes learning to evaluate medical-psychological theories and concepts, but also empirical results, and learning to keep a cool head even in emotionally charged situations in order to criticise methods and still be able to proceed and make methodologically sound decisions.

How often do you realise that you are talking past each other in conversations! Listening is one of the most difficult human endeavours - and it is surprisingly exhausting. Everyone tends to criticise others when they don't lend you their ear enough, but it's easy to overlook how much self-discipline and self-observation are required to conduct a conversation appropriately. How often have we observed a doctor blocking or interrupting conversations in the practice, allowing themselves to be distracted and thus jeopardising the patient's trust?

But even in student work meetings, the conditions for dialogue are not always satisfactory. Unfortunately, it must be feared that with increasing experience, conversational tendencies that you bring with you tend to intensify and worsen; they sometimes become (un)expressed sources of error in communication. It is even more difficult to conduct dialogue within some therapies or diagnostic measures. This is where medical psychology offers classic assistance. Students should familiarise themselves with different objectives and the resulting different forms of medical conversation and gain their own initial experience in conducting psychologically reflective conversations. In particular, typical sources of error should be familiarised with and avoided.

Basics of counselling and psychotherapy

Medical psychology deals with general problems of diagnosis (classification and decision-making process, unclear cases, individual case problems, interaction between diagnosis and therapy).

Students should familiarise themselves with these general aspects of psychodiagnostics even before they learn individual clinical diagnostic methods. Medical psychology must explain the general principles of therapeutic measures, especially their psychological components. The focus here is on the situation of counselling and, to some extent, the basics of psychotherapy.

• Development and course of diseases (reference systems of health and disease, health and disease models, methodological foundations, theoretical foundations)
• Medical practice (doctor-patient relationship, examination and discussion, judgement and decision-making, forms of intervention, special medical situations, patient and healthcare system)
• Promotion and maintenance of health (prevention, measures)

In order to acquire the basic knowledge in medical psychology/medical sociology as required by the subject catalogue, students must decide for themselves which working methods and tools to use. Our department offers students the opportunity to take part in the lecture, the compulsory courses and seminars and the "Examination Questions Forum", as well as our literature recommendations. Incidentally, the main lecture deals with new topics every academic year (beginning in the winter semester and ending in the following summer semester) and it is worth paying attention to the notices.

One of the first and most important observations at university and elsewhere (e.g. in hospital) are the noticeable conflicts and role problems. As a student, you are also familiar with this from working together in study groups. We observe the formation of cliques and the isolation of certain groups.

In many cases, students under examination pressure adopt a competitive working style instead of cooperative behaviour: everyone against everyone else; if you're lucky: Small group against small group.

For its part, medical psychology strives to ensure that students learn to recognise the extent to which, for example, their own career choice was influenced by various educational instances and the extent to which their own tendency to act is influenced by institutional conditions later in their careers. A prerequisite for satisfactory, collegial cooperation in the profession with other specialist groups and with representatives of other healthcare professions would be an attempt to establish a collegial style of interaction among students as a trial phase.