In an independent learning project, 52 third-year medical students carried out a structured self-assessment of two videotaped psycho-social interviews they had conducted with volunteer clients 1 year earlier, as part of a previous course. The interviews had been conducted in small tutorials with feedback from their clients, fellow students and tutors, facilitated by videotape playback. During the sequence of 16 tutorials each student had carried out an early and a late interview and had observed and participated in the discussion of the interviews of 14 peers. Students were asked to tally the frequencies of various interview behaviours, to evaluate the quality of their behaviours, and to establish priorities for future learning. The videotapes were also reliably rated by an independent observer. Students' overall self-assessments correlated 0.46 with those of the independent observer. This correlation was higher than is typically reported in studies of the validity of self-assessment. In absolute terms, the students' mean rating of interviewing performance was 3.2 (adequate plus) which was significantly lower than the observer's mean of 3.6 (adequate to good). Results are discussed in terms of Gordon's (1992) two recommendations for improving the validity of self-assessments and two further suggestions, for paired comparisons and low-threat learning environments, are added.

In a multicultural society such as Australia, with over 20% of its population born overseas, interpreters are often required to facilitate medical interviews. However, where a patient has some proficiency in English, medical interviews are sometimes conducted across the boundaries of culture and language. This is a report of an educational innovation to teach interviewing skills to pre-clinical medical students with the assistance of volunteers of non-English-speaking backgrounds. Pre-clinical students interviewed community volunteers on topics of general life history in a sequence of 16 tutorials. Each student conducted two interviews. Teaching methods included feedback from the volunteers, tutorial discussion facilitated by playback of videotapes, and modelling of skills by the teachers. Evaluations by volunteers and students indicated high satisfaction with the teaching methods and outcomes. Students gained confidence in interviewing people from different cultures. Evaluation of students' pairs of videotapes by an independent rater achieved satisfactory reliabilities and indicated significant gains in inquiry skills and the communication of positive attitudes. Skills in communicating empathy and in using simple language did not improve measurably.

Australian medical students (N = 645) were asked at the beginning of their training to rank the importance of a list of motivations relevant to their choice of medicine as a career. Both male and female students ranked the desire to help others as the most important motivation, closely followed by the scientific nature and the intellectual challenge of the profession of medicine. Both genders rated considerations of status and prestige as of low importance. These findings are similar to surveys from other countries that have reported altruism and intellectual challenge as prime motivations for both genders.