Guiding principles for physician reentry programs.

Physician reentry is defined by the American Medical Association (AMA) as: "A return to clinical practice in the discipline in which one has been trained or certified following an extended period of clinical inactivity not resulting from discipline or impairment." Physician reentry programs are creating an avenue for physicians who have left medicine in good standing to return to clinical practice. To date, however, programs have developed independently, with little coordination among them.

Recent trends in american board of psychiatry and neurology psychiatric subspecialties.

Objective: this article reviews the current status and recent trends in the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) psychiatric subspecialties and discusses the implications of those trends as well as several key questions whose answers may well determine subspecialty viability.

Methods: data are presented on specialty and subspecialty programs; graduates; and ABPN certification candidates and diplomates drawn from several sources, including the records of the ABPN, the websites of the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education and the American Medical Association, and the annual medical education issues of JAMA.

Results: fewer than half of psychiatry graduates pursue subspecialty training.

Relationship between Resident-In-Training Examination in psychiatry and subsequent certification examination performances.

Objective: This study analyzed the relationship between performance on The American College of Psychiatrists' Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Examination (PRITE) and the ABPN Part 1 examination.

Methods: Pearson correlation coefficients were used to examine the relationship between performance on the 2002 PRITE and the 2003 Part 1 examination for 297 examinees.

Results: The correlation between the PRITE global psychiatry and the Part 1 psychiatry scores was 0.

The ABPN Maintenance of Certification Program for psychiatrists: past history, current status, and future directions.

Objective: To describe the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) Maintenance of Certification Program, its underlying rationale, how it will be implemented now, and what it might look like in the future.

Methods: The authors describe the philosophical foundation, specific components, and the implementation timeline of the ABPN Maintenance of Certification Program; the development of specific products that might be used by ABPN diplomates to meet its requirements; and several unanswered questions about its current status and future development.

Results: The ABPN Maintenance of Certification Program consists of specific requirements pertaining to professional standing, self-assessment and lifelong learning, performance in practice, and cognitive expertise that will be implemented incrementally over the next decade.

Schizophrenia and sexual functioning.

To address the scarcity of literature on the sexual functioning of schizophrenic patients, two therapists interviewed 20 schizophrenic patients in a community mental health center's inpatient unit. In a context designed to make the patients feel safe and to encourage rapport, patients were asked about sexual dysfunctions, sexual norms, relationship patterns, and drug-related sexual side-effects. The therapists' impressions were that the data obtained were as reliable as similar information obtained from patients presenting to a sexual dysfunction clinic, that the incidence of sexual dysfunction among these schizophrenic patients was no different from that among the general population, and that the manifest sexual relationship problems were due to lack of social skills and deterioration of social functioning, rather than to a primary, structural impairment specific to schizophrenia.

Education and integration of midlevel health-care practitioners in obstetrics and gynecology: experience of a training program in Washington state.

The impetus for the development of the Gynecorps Training Program was the identification of medically underserved populations of women in Washington State and their need for preventive health care, the maldistribution of physicians, and the success of a pilot program for training midlevel personnel conducted in 1972 by the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology, University of Washington School of Medicine. The program trains community-based and -sponsored Registered Nurses and Physician's Assistants as women's health-care specialists, with the goal of delivering preventive care in obstetrics and gynecology to populations of high-risk, low-income, and/or underserved women. A summary of the training program, its curriculum, and the integration of its graduates into community health teams is presented and discussed.