Teaching psychiatry to nonpsychiatrists: II. A model curriculum

It is becoming increasingly clear that psychiatric and psychosocial needs of medical patients are not being adequately met. This need has led to an increasing emphasis on the psychiatric education of nonpsychiatrists at varying levels of experience. Given the many problems involved in these educational efforts, as well as the paucity of evaluation studies and the uncertainty of results, the authors argue that the systematic application of empirically-validated educational principles may lead to greatly improved effectiveness. In the first section of a two-part series, the authors reviewed educational methodology as it relates to the development of objectives, the selection of teaching procedures, and the use of evaluation techniques. The present paper, part-two, describes in detail a "model" curriculum for primary care residents that was developed according to these principles of educational methodology.