Developing a psychiatric residency program: focus on the community.

Abstract

A three-year general residency program intended to train psychiatrists to be as competent in group therapies and community work as in psychoanalytic psychotherapy was set up in a crisis center in the Bronx. Community members from the center's catchment area were actively involved in the planning for the training program and the center. The psychiatric residents in the program plan and revise their own curriculum, in collaboration with the faculty, and they work closely with faculty and staff in an apprentice system of learning. In this paper two faculty members describe the program's planning and the first year of operation; they also comment briefly on the program's current status. In the following paper two former residents present their view of the program's development and some of their experiences during the first year.