Psychiatric residency training programs in the United States are based on regulation by the ACGME (Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education). They basically consist of a four-year course (six years if the child program is included), with a variety of didactic courses as well as clinical assignments in different clinical settings affiliated with the local residency program. Each resident is closely supervised by his/her supervisor during his/her clinical assignment. Clinical training opportunities are supplemented by on-call duties which require each resident to apply the entire repertoire of skills of a fully-fledged psychiatrist, with intake assessment for hospitalization as well as acute psychiatric coverage in emergency rooms. The author participated in one of these programs at the Menninger Clinic in Kansas in the early 1990s. He discussed one of his own anecdotes, which depicts a potential pitfall for inexperienced psychiatric clinicians.
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