The use of the psychiatric consultation record for residency training

The Psychiatric Consultation Record (PCR) is an instrument developed to aid in the teaching of consultation psychiatry, to evaluate the impact of this teaching, and to provide an overall assessment of the consultation training program at St. Luke's Hospital. The PCR both structures the resident's training experience and provides a tool with which he or she can integrate theoretical and practical knowledge pertaining to consultation work. Its use has enabled supervisors to detect the degree to which didactic material has become integrated into residents' thinking and has provided data through which the scope and quality of each resident's work can be rapidly assessed. Finally, its use has brought to light deficiencies in service delivery which, before the use of this instrument, had not been apparent.