Psychology Interns\u27 View of the Psychiatric Consult

The purpose of this study was to discover those aspects of psychiatric consultation that clinical psychology interns consider important and whether or not philosophical orientation of training program influences the value these interns would place on its various facets. All clinical psychology interns working in medical settings in the year 1979 were asked to complete a questionnaire on which they rated various aspects of a routine psychiatric consult and to indicate the orientation of their internship training program. Approximately 69% returned a completed questionnaire with the majority indicating their program\u27s therapeutic orientation to be either psychodynamic or behavioral. They valued the recommendations about psychiatric medications the most and deemphasized those services which they either typically provide themselves and/or which they may not have realized that the psychiatric consult can address. In general, training program model did not affect how psychology interns viewed the psychiatric consult