Postgraduate Psychiatric Education: The Ethnography of a Failure

Recent interest in postgraduate psychiatric education for nonpsychiatrist physicians has stimulated discussion of effective course planning, promotion, and content. To this increasing body of literature the authors contribute an account of their experience with a course of this type that failed—in part because its sponsors neglected to plan around the realities of the local sociopsychological atmosphere in the medical community where the course was offered. They conclude that simply making such courses available and locating them conveniently in the physicians' own communities are not certain keys to success.