Long-term rotation in the department of psychiatry during a general physician residency

Abstract

Integrating mental health into primary care is necessary to provide effective mental health services to those who need them. We report herein a three-month rotation in the department of psychiatry by a general physician. As a result, the resident reported becoming more aware of the inextricable link between physical and mental health, feeling more accustomed to social work and multi-disciplinary cooperation, and learning methods for managing delirium and applying them in community healthcare. The rotation also helped psychiatric care providers recognize both the general and specialized aspects of psychiatric care, improve physical care in the psychiatric ward, and share their knowledge about pitfalls with doctors not specializing in psychiatry. This experience led us to form the following hypotheses: 1) long-term rotation in a department of psychiatry during a general physician residency requires the presence of an attending psychiatrist who is competent to understand the limits of the residents’ psychiatric knowledge and to anticipate their needs; 2) although the residents’ experience with outpatients and diseases and their ability to generalize their experiences are limited, the duration of three months is adequate; 3) the curriculum setting requires individualization, and this process itself has intrinsic educational value.