Specialist Training in Psychiatry and Psychotherapy : Evaluation of the East Westphalia-Lippe Academy curriculum

Despite of the undisputed impact of education quality on becoming a specialist in psychiatry and psychotherapist, systematic studies in this field do not exist in Germany, apart from the evaluation of practical education by the medical councils. The Akademie-OWL, an education union of psychiatric clinics in the East Westphalia region of Germany, has provided 12-item questionnaire-based routine evaluations of theoretical education seminars since 2009. Seminars are held by consultants of psychiatry and psychotherapy within six separate weeks over a period of four years. All lecturers receive feedback from the evaluation. The results of this ongoing evaluation are presented using a typical example and in an aggregated format as a time series on the basis of one global item. The data show that (1) the full range of a five-point Likert scale is used by the candidates, (2) psychiatric competences of the lecturers are more positively evaluated than their didactic competences, (3) neither within the four-years period of psychiatric education nor between different generations of candidates are systematic changes of evaluation results observed, and (4) minor to moderate differences of evaluation were observed between the different thematic fields of psychiatry and psychotherapy. These results indicate the need of more systematic education research on establishing valid and reliable specific instruments as well as the need of systematic training of didactic competences of teaching consultants.