Curriciulum

Our current curriculum incorporates many of the recent changes in the field of psychiatry. The 1980s saw rapid growth of neurosciences and medical psychiatry while the influence of community psychiatry and psychodynamic psychiatry waned. The cost consciousness of the 1990s resulted in a greater focus on systems-based practice. As a result of these changes, the department conducted a retreat in May 2000, to examine the existing departments. Four specialty groups, in areas of biological psychiatry and research, psychotherapy, descriptive psychiatry, and community and social psychiatry were formed to revise the curriculum. New comprehensive and integrated curriculum was introduced in July 2000.

In this curriculum, the previous emphasis on psychoanalytic theory was replaced with a more comprehensive bio-psychosocial approach. The biological curriculum was updated to include the state-of-the-art theories and techniques. In the area of community psychiatry, the clinical training was complemented by a full series of Department’s lectures on social and community psychiatry. In psychotherapy training, while retaining the traditional strengths in psychodynamic psychotherapy, training in a broad variety of other therapeutic modalities such as the CBT, and group therapy were introduced. In descriptive psychiatry, strong emphasis was placed on residents acquiring greater competence in the areas of clinical interviewing and case formulation.

Our curriculum uses as its framework the recently introduced core-competency requirement by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME). The core competencies are the knowledge, skills and attitudinal attributes that a physician should possess in the minimum to be judged competent by society. The following are the core-competencies:

PATIENT CARE
MEDICAL KNOWLEDGE
PRACTICE-BASED LEARNING AND IMPROVEMENT

• INTERPERSONAL AND COMMUNICATION SKILLS PROFESSIONALISM
• SYSTEMS-BASED PRACTICE
• ATTITUDES

The ACGME has mandated that each specialty in medicine organize its training activities to inculcate these competencies. In this document, the psychiatry specific core-competencies will be detailed. In addition, the attitudes that a resident should possess, in the context of the core-competencies, will also be mentioned: