THE EDUCATION COMMITTEE REPORT

In our Education Committee meeting, there was a great deal of discussion about the "Call to Action" Strategic Plan of the AACAP. There was no consensus about the dramatically shortened training tracks in our specialty, but a call for further study. However, there was strong consensus about developing a track by which medical students interested in child and adolescent psychiatry could enter the specialty directly from medical school. This would enable them to start training in child and adolescent psychiatry from the start of their residency, though they would have to complete all required rotations in general psychiatry as well. There was great enthusiasm for this approach, which is already being done in some training programs and is about to be started in some others.

The committee will determine how many programs are offering this kind of opportunity. It will also study aspects of why many residents in general psychiatry who initially plan to enter child and adolescent psychiatry do not do so. The committee agreed to correspond during the year and continue to develop ideas in this important area. We shall also take our liaison function with AACAP very seriously at this year's annual meeting.

Further, at the Society of Professors this year, as co-education chair, I presented a paper on critical thinking, reporting on a study I did (Academic Psychiatry, 26: 257 - 261, 2002) on critical thinking in child and adolescent psychiatry residents. There were

Pueblo Feast Day Photo credit, Jack Parsons

significant problems with critical thinking in a group of "good" residents, and, after a course in philosophy that emphasized design of experiments, ontology, and epistemology, there was great improvement in this realm according to scores on the Cornell Test of Critical Thinking. I discussed implications of this project, as well as possible future projects, to measure this important phenomenon. I also advocated for an approach to training in our field that would emphasize critical components of its future -- neural imaging, psychogenomics, neurobiology -- rather than a narrow effort to meet RRC standards.

I thought the meeting was very salutary and hope that our Education Committee will, over the years, be able to play a more important role in shaping educational debate about training in our specialty and the form that training should take.