Teaching Collaborative Care in Primary Care Settings for Psychiatry Residents

Job descriptions for psychiatrists will change significantly over the next decade, as psychiatrists will be called on to work as caseload consultants to the primary care team.

The purpose of this pilot study was to examine the effects of an American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training-approved collaborative care curriculum on caseload consulting skills among psychiatry residents.

In 2014, 46 psychiatry residents (5 postgraduate year 1s, 10 postgraduate year 2s, 22 postgraduate year 3s, and 9 postgraduate year 4s) from 5 academic psychiatry residency programs in the New England area were given the 2-hour pilot collaborative care curriculum. Participants were asked to complete an anonymous survey at both the beginning and the end of the workshop to rate their comfort level in aspects of collaborative care psychiatry (7 items from SBP4 psychiatry milestones) based on a Likert scale (1-not at all, 2-slightly, 3-moderately, and 4-extremely). Paired t-test was used to examine the difference between pretest and posttest results of residents participating in the workshop.

The pretest mean score for the group was 2.9 (standard deviation = 0.44), whereas the posttest mean was 3.51 (standard deviation = 0.42), p < 0.0001. Only 15% (n = 7) of residents reported having some form of primary care or ambulatory specialty care consultation experience while in training.

This brief collaborative care curriculum significantly improved resident confidence in milestone criteria related to population health and case-based consultations.