Teaching the physician-manager role to psychiatric residents: development and implementation of a pilot curriculum

The authors describe a pilot physician-manager curriculum designed to address the learning needs of psychiatric residents in administrative psychiatry and health systems.

The pilot curriculum includes a junior and a senior toolkit of four workshops each. The junior toolkit introduces postgraduate-year two (PGY-2) residents to the principles of teamwork, conflict resolution, quality improvement, and program planning and evaluation. The senior toolkit exposes PGY-4 residents to leadership and change management, organizational structures, mental health and addictions reform, and self and career development. Following curriculum implementation at the University of Toronto, residents rated the importance and clinical relevance of curriculum objectives and commented on the strengths and weaknesses of the workshops and areas needing improvement.

The pilot curriculum was successfully introduced at the University of Toronto in 2006. Residents rated the curriculum very highly and commented that interactive learning and contextually relevant topics are essential in meeting their needs.

It is possible to successfully introduce a physician-manager curriculum early during psychiatric residency training, to match the specific needs of clinical rotations. Interactive techniques and clinical illustrations may be crucial in facilitating teaching and learning the physician-manager role. The authors discuss barriers, facilitators, and critical success factors in implementing such a curriculum.