Difficulties in postgraduate training of foreign paediatric residents and interns in child psychiatry

In a new program of teaching and consultation in child psychiatry for paediatric interns and residents, many of them of foreign birth, several approaches were tried: individual case consultation; screening conferences; experiential groups; didactic sessions. None succeeded very well. As a result of this experience, however, we have been able to identify some of the problems of the foreign students (and our own), which made the more usual educational approaches ineffective with them, and to determine better approaches. Some of the students had personal problems of adjustment, most were relatively unfamiliar with the culture, others could not communicat adequately and had scant psychiatric knowledge, and almost all were accustomed to an entirely different student-teacher relation. The most effective way of dealing with these problems was found to be through one-to-one supervision and consultation. Didactic sessions were changed to focus on specific ways to handle specific problems, with only simple, not very theoretical reading material used. With the growth of personal relations, informal consultation and teaching increased, and the formal programme became more successful.