PsyDRxPnow said:
Perhaps you should enjoy that "research" experience during your residency because that is about all the research that you will be doing.
Here is a partial list of the research projects and departments I will get involved with during my psychiatry residency:
http://www.mssm.edu/psychiatry/research.shtml
Many argue that medical school, with the ever-increasing advancements and pharmacopeia, should be lengthened. Where do you propose medical school institute all these statistics and research classes? Should they take multivariate stats? Why not a dissertation? Nova Southeastern University requires Psyd's to complete 2 research classes, in addition to their research project/dissertation.
http://www.cps.nova.edu/ Medical schools now largely require a biostatistics class, and an EBM class. Given the volume of material in medical school, a dissertation is unreasonable and unnecessary. MD/PhD programs exist for that purpose.
LIJ has their own academic journal for psychiatry alone. Mt. Sinai publishes its own research journal, as do many, many other medical schools.
We are required to publish SOMETHING before we graduate from residency. We have classes in statistics, research design, and EBM in residency. The truth is that medicine is a profession of treating patients. It is not an academic degree. If you've ever read a journal like the NEJM, you'd see that medical research is more practical, it addresses clinically related questions and treatment strategies for practicing physicians. The statistics are easier to interpret, and do not unduely, and for academic discussion's sake, invoke complex statistics to be debated among other researchers.
After that, you will be pushing drugs unto patients after approximately 15 minutes of "medication management". That is my personal experience after working in a psychiatric hospital for 6 years after watching psychiatrist prescribe mainly psychotropics to their patients and allowing everyone else conduct the research, assessments, and psychotherapy.
Good luck on your case study presentation.
Again, my perspective. Has it ever occured to you that perhaps a psychiatrist's patient population is doing well, and do not require an hour long session every week? Given the severe shortage of psychiatrists that psychologists assert as reason to pursue prescription privilages, why would you possibly expect a psychiatrist to do a 3 hour intake on a patient, with countless paper and pencil tests? Psychiatrists do what all physicians are trained to do - assess patients concisely when necessary, elicit symptom complexes, review changes in medical status, and treat accordingly. For what it's worth, I don't know a psychiatrist that does solely "15 minute med checks." All whom I know see patients for 15 minutes if appropriate, and for a half hour or hour when necessary, and time for them is alotted as such. Many of these 15 minute med checks are for patients that the psychiatrists have agreed to see as outpatients that were once inpatients, and are doing so at a lower reimbursement rate, since many private psychiatrists will not see chronics without insurance.
If psychiatrists saw all their patients for hours each session, did hour long therapy sessions and testing, as you suggest, you'd be out of a job.
