Advising and mentoring programs for medical students vary in their official names, scope, and structures. Catalyzed by negative student feedback regarding career advising and a perceived disconnection between faculty and students, in academic year 2003-2004, Columbia University College of Physicians and Surgeons implemented its formal Advisory Dean (AD) Program and disbanded its former advising system that used faculty volunteers. The AD Program has become a key element for enhancing the students' professional development throughout their student training, focusing on topics including, but not limited to, career counseling, professionalism, humanism, and wellness resources. Advisory deans and the dean for student affairs, familiar with resources for academic development, student support, and extracurricular activities, operate at the nexus of the program, providing personalized mentoring and advising for each student. Fully supported by administration and faculty, the program has shown early success according to student feedback. Early feedback from the Class of 2006, who had been involved in our AD Program for three years, has been encouraging. Out of 152 students, 104 (68%) provided feedback, with 93 (89%) of the respondents reporting the AD Program as a valuable initiative. Expecting to further improve on this early positive response, the AD Program will continue to foster an environment conducive to a seamless transition from student to physician.
Traditional objections to research in dynamic psychotherapy on the grounds that patients experience research procedures as significantly intrusive and disruptive appear to be unfounded.
New requirements by the Psychiatry Residency Review Committee of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education maintain that residents must be competent in five specified psychotherapies. This shift toward evidence-based education and assessment highlights psychotherapy as an integral part of a psychiatrist's training and identity, while introducing accountability of training programs, faculty, and individual residents. Training directors must now find the resources in faculty, patients, and residency teaching time to teach, supervise and assess residents so they graduate with competency. The American Association of Directors of Residency Training (AADPRT) appointed a Task Force on Competency to assist training directors with the new requirements. The Task Force, through the establishment of five workgroups, has written sample competencies for each required psychotherapy: brief, cognitive behavioral, psychodynamic, supportive and combined psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. In this article, the authors describe the historical context of the new requirements, and the goals, process and issues that arose in the development of the sample competencies.
scite is a Brooklyn-based organization that helps researchers better discover and understand research articles through Smart Citations–citations that display the context of the citation and describe whether the article provides supporting or contrasting evidence. scite is used by students and researchers from around the world and is funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the National Institute on Drug Abuse of the National Institutes of Health.