Providing residents with a comprehensive educational program in outpatient psychiatry : integrating an outpatient curriculum into outpatient management teams.

As part of their efforts to prepare psychiatry residents for comprehensive, practical outpatient psychiatric practice, the authors have established an organized training program in ambulatory psychiatry. The program consists of outpatient management teams that run from mid-PGY-2 to PGY-4, a specified minimum number of mandatory outpatient hours for continuity patient care, and suggested guidelines for residents' outpatient experiences. An outpatient management team curriculum has been designed for team leaders and trainees that consists of specific topics in outpatient care, associated learning objectives, and readings for each topic. This curriculum, which supplements our previous program of conferences, individual supervision, and a yearlong psychotherapy seminar series, has been refined over the past 5 years. The authors describe the program and the topics included in the curriculum.