Teaching and training in the psychiatric-psychosomatic consultation- liaison setting

Background: The consultation-liaison (C-L) psychiatrist isin an opportune position to undertake the tasks of education,training and assessment of performance as regardsfuture physicians, psychiatrists, specialists in otherbranches and nurses. This paper describes the educationand training programme in the Psychiatric-PsychosomaticC-L Service of Modena University Hospital. Descriptionof the Programme: This programme consists ofthe following main activities: (1) daily group-case supervision,performed by the full-time psychiatrist togetherwith the psychiatry residents of the C-L staff; (2) abimonthly quality management meeting, which is part ofa European project of measurement and improvement ofquality of service; (3) weekly lectures on selected topics;(4) monthly tutorials in research techniques; (5) bimonthlypresentations of literature reviews; (6) weekly clinicalcase conferences, which are the nucleus of the curriculumand which focus on the following main topics: ‘the patients’, ‘the intervention’ and ‘the group’, and (7) liaisonmeetings requested by non-psychiatric departments.Conclusions: A common denominator seenthroughout the teaching and training activities of such aprogramme is the attitude of openness and effort towardintegration which should be the C-L psychiatrist’s distinguishingmark, in the context of the general hospital.