A Survey of Adult Psychiatry Residency Programs About Training in C-L Psychiatry

Background: Despite training in consultation-liaison (CL) psychiatry representing a core requirement for general residency training in psychiatry, there is significant variation in the structure, timing, length, setting, and educational components for residents in programs throughout the country. The last official survey of CL training in residency was conducted by the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP) in 2010 with responses from 92 residency programs across the country (Heinrich 2013). Based on the results of that survey, recommendations were issued by the ACLP in 2014 concerning best practices for residency training in CL psychiatry (Heinrich 2014).









Methods: Members of the ACLP Residency Education Subcommittee designed an updated survey based on the survey tool used in 2013. In addition to questions about the structure of residency training, we also asked questions about CL fellowships and their relationship to the CL experience of residents attending structures on CL services, learners from other health professions, educational content, and modifications made during the COVID-19 pandemic. Following exemption by the Partners Institutional Review Board, we distributed the survey in anonymous and confidential format through RedCap to 273 adult psychiatry residency program directors using the American Medical Association’s FREIDA^TM database. Program directors were instructed that they could complete the survey themselves or forward to relevant faculty.









Results: We will discuss the results of the survey including the response rate; distribution of programs in terms of geography, size and focus; length, timing, structure and setting of CL rotation; presence and role of fellows and other learners; model of attending staffing; educational and didactic components; and modifications made in the setting of COVID-19.









Discussion: Based on the findings, we anticipate a discussion of trends in residency CL education over the past decade. Specifically, we anticipate focus on earlier CL training, novel training patterns, CL rotations spread across multiple years, increasing focus on outpatient CL experiences, and increased learners and other staff on services. The topic is of immediate relevance to training in CL psychiatry and thus to developing careers in CL psychiatry, a meeting theme.









Conclusion: We expect these findings will provide important information for issuing an updated set of guidelines for CL training in residency for the next decade.









References:




Heinrich TW, Schwartz AC, Zimbrean PC, Lolak S, Wright MT, Brooks KB, Ernst CL, Gitlin DF. “Recommendations for training psychiatry residents in psychosomatic medicine.” Psychosomatics 2014; 55:438-449.









Heinrich TW, Schwartz AC, Zimbrean PC, Wright MT; Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine's Residency Education Subcommittee. The state of the service: a survey of psychiatry resident education in psychosomatic medicine. Psychosomatics. 2013 Nov-Dec;54(6):560-6. doi: 10.1016/j.psym.2013.07.005.