An informal study of two groups of psychiatric residents showed the effects of changes in training requirements, eliminating medical rotation. The ways in which this is unfair to the residents themselves, to the patients, to staff psychiatrists and to ward nurses, are documented. New residents without medical experience are not ignorant, nor are they poorly motivated. Indeed, on both scores they
... [Show full abstract] are at least on a par with their medically trained peers. The problem is that they are poorly trained. This situation will continue until the new residents are required to complete a period of medical internship or residency prior to their psychiatric training. Without such training, they cannot maximize their psychiatric training experiences. Moreover, once into psychiatry, they manifest extreme reluctance to return to medical services. Another alternative may be to develop a new type of psychiatrist who would not do hospital psychiatry or hospital consultations nor prescribe medications or other somatic therapies. He would work solely in the psychotherapies. As a new profession, legal and ethical criteria would evolve to govern the work of these practitioners, criteria different from those which society applies to physicians. This alternative might have little effect on certain esoteric practices of psychiatry. Probably it would impair the standard of general outpatient psychiatric care; however, it would at least reduce the iatrogenic risk to inpatients.
