Community Psychiatry Major Focus Of APA’s Fall Institute

“What a wonderful meeting!,” “I am happy I could participate in this meeting,” and “Thank you” are typical evaluation comments that APA’s Institute on Psychiatric Services gets from participants.

Smaller than APA’s annual meeting, APA’s fall institute—which is being held October 9 to 13 in Chicago—gives participants a more intimate setting in which to learn and share their experiences. Since sessions are smaller, there will be many occasions for personal interaction with faculty and other attendees.

The focus of the institute is on community psychiatry, and this year’s theme, “Community Counts: Creating and Supporting Systems of Care,” gives presenters an enhanced opportunity to discuss their innovative approaches to dealing with all the obstacles psychiatrists commonly encounter in providing patient care. We know them well: funding shortages, managed care, difficult patients, and so on. Institute attendees will hear from colleagues about how their ideas, usually worked out in collaborative groups, made a difference. Their insights will stimulate thinking and give a fresh perspective. Many of the presentations give practical, down-to-earth descriptions of what was done and what worked.

The CME courses being offered this year are mostly repeats of previous years, included in the program again because of the enthusiastic evaluations they received. Dr. Kenneth Minkoff is presenting “Integrated Model for Treatment of Co-occurring Psychiatric and Substance Disorders.” The goal of this course is to help practitioners develop a framework that facilitates treatment planning and treatment matching, and permits the design of a comprehensive, continuous, and integrated system of care.

How about “Help! I’ve Been Promoted: Introduction to Administration and Management” by Drs. Mark Russakoff and Philip Veenhuis. This course will cover the basic concepts central to understanding organizations, organizational processes, and the management of personnel for those who are interested in clinical administrative positions or have recently been promoted to such positions.

“Personnel Management for Clinician-Managers,” led by Dr. Stephen Soltys, is a new, highly interactive course in which three psychiatrists with extensive senior management experience will help participants develop the skills to deal with a range of personnel issues that commonly occur in private and public mental health settings. Techniques for effective recruitment, supervision, negotiating, discipline, motivation, and termination will be described.

“Correctional Psychiatry,” led by Dr. Henry Weinstein, is a presentation of the APA Caucus of Psychiatrists Practicing in Criminal Justice Settings. Basic topics will include careers in correctional psychiatry, the legal context of correctional psychiatry, psychopharmacology in correctional settings, and basic ethics issues, as well as the “rules of engagement,” that is, the rules and routines of a correctional environment and how psychiatrists can work within such constraints. Advanced topics will include integrating medical and mental health services, cross-training with security personnel, and dealing with special populations.

Other courses include “Build Your Own Relational Database Electronic Medical Record (EMR)” by Dr. Daniel Deutschman; “Limit Setting With Psychiatric Patients” by Dr. Donald Misch; and “Engaging Resistant and Hostile Patients Into Participatory Treatment” by Dr. David Mee-Lee.

Can you afford to miss out? See you in Chicago!

The institute’s preliminary program and a detailed description of all the CME courses can be obtained by calling (888) 357-7924 or visiting APA’s Web site at www.psych.org/sched_events/ips02/index.cfm. ▪