Consultation Psychiatry as a Career Choice Among Psychiatric Residents — 1980

Abstract

The importance of consultation psychiatry in the training of psychiatrists and in their work has been recognized for many decades. In 1967, Mendel (1) was quoted saying in reference to the teaching of psychiatric consultation, “it is like motherhood; everyone is for it. But nothing is being done.” The 1970’s saw further emphasis by educators on the psychiatrist’s medical identity (2). In 1975, the educational oracles gathered at the Conference on Education of Psychiatrists sponsored by the American Psychiatric Association saw psychiatrists increasingly functioning in a liaison and consultative capacity with other physicians (p. 60, 3). Yet Schubert in a survey conducted in 1976 comparing psychiatric consultation education in 1976 to that in 1966 found only a slight increase in the amount of consultation liaison training in medical school psychiatric residency training programs. Furthermore, he found that only 10% of the total residency training time was spent in consultation liaison. This seemed to indicate that other more traditional experiences in training programs still took up the majority of residents’ training (4).