Teaching trainees about the practice of consultation-liaison psychiatry in the general hospital.

摘要

Learning about the scope of psychiatric practice in the general hospital is essential for trainees and their patients. Consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatry (officially named psychosomatic medicine), the subspecialty of psychiatry that deals with the care of patients with comorbid psychiatric and medical/surgical illness, is taught through formal didactics, teaching and bedside rounds, and demonstration of specific skills (eg, critical thinking, autognosis [self-knowledge]). Both the process and the content of these educational forums are equally important. In this article, we discuss the theory, place, techniques, and challenges of teaching the craft of consultation psychiatry.