Residents Teaching Residents: Results of an Interdisciplinary Educational Endeavor

Abstract

Objectives

Resident physicians across disciplines are engaged in teaching at multiple levels. Available literature focuses on medical student education and intra-disciplinary teaching. The national shortage of psychiatrists coupled with an increasing mental illness burden necessitates development of creative interdisciplinary collaboration. The authors report on an interdisciplinary, resident-to-resident didactic series assessing whether such a model could improve internal medicine resident comfort with managing psychiatric illness on inpatient medical wards.

Methods

Internal medicine residents were assessed regarding their comfort level with managing certain common inpatient psychiatric presentations before and after the delivery of a teaching curriculum designed and delivered by psychiatry residents.

Results

Internal medicine residents’ overall confidence with identifying and managing common psychiatric problems on inpatient medical wards improved. Comfort level with managing depression and demoralization and determining decisional capacity both improved to a statistically significant degree.

Conclusions

Collaborative, interdisciplinary care is complex and its benefits can be difficult to assess. Data from this study showed that interdisciplinary teaching at the resident level has the potential to be an effective means for building collaboration and can lead to a subjective improvement in comfort managing common inpatient psychiatric presentations on medical wards. Additionally, qualitative observations suggest that such an intervention can improve interdisciplinary collaboration.