Residency training in public psychiatry: a review of literature

Training of psychiatry residents in a conmmunity setting has been emerging as a more rational and reasonable choice for psychiatry residency training, considering the shift of reliance in the recent years for psychiatric services from inpatient care in hospitals to outpatient care in the community.

A literature review regarding residency training in community psychiatry was performed using the Medline databases. Seven residency training programs' curricula were included in this review. The curriculum of each of these seven programs was also obtained from their respective Internet home pages. The authors describe the community psychiatry training curriculum of their affiliated program, the University of Alabama at Birmingham.

A brief description of community training curricula of these eight programs is provided. These curricula, especially their unique characteristics, are then compared in a table.

The psychiatry training programs differ in many noteworthy ways while providing their residents with "community psychiatry experience." The table provides a quick comparison and highlights the differences of these programs. The authors emphasize the need for a "model curriculum," taking into consideration various factors including the local resources available where the residents could rotate for their community psychiatry experience.

The authors concluded that psychiatry residency training programs need to publish their curricula, so that other programs can modify their own curricula, if needed, and hence provide an excellent experience in community psychiatry to their residents and future psychiatrists.