New challenges to the faculty in the education of psychiatrists

Significant social and economic pressures on academic medicine to become more cost conscious and scientifically accountable have led to new tensions in psychiatric residency training. Failure to distinguish between changes in practice derived from scientific advances and those derived from other sources has major implications for the education of future psychiatrists. After providing a conceptual framework for understanding current forces that affect residency training, the author proposes a new role for the psychiatric faculty, who should protect the curriculum and the trainee from shortsighted demands that could lower the quality of residency education and make psychiatry a less attractive specialty.