Evidence-Based Practices: An Opportunity to Enhance Psychiatric Residency Training

Abstract

Staring back at me through the Zoom interface was a small, thin-faced boy, too nervous and overwhelmed to tell me anything more than his own name and the name of his dog: Cooper. This was the first child therapy case I was assigned as a resident trainee. He was a young adolescent with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. Two years ago, he was outgoing, playful, and sociable. Now he apprehensively stared at me, underweight and highly anxious. He was experiencing medical trauma through countless hospital admissions for chemotherapy and opportunistic infections during the ongoing global pandemic. At the time he was transferred to my care, he carried multiple psychiatric diagnoses, including generalized anxiety disorder, major depressive disorder, and posttraumatic stress disorder. I had no idea where to begin. Though I was in my third year of Triple Board training, which includes adult psychiatry, pediatrics, and child psychiatry fellowship, I felt unprepared. My education and exposure to psychotherapy had been somewhat limited; but even still, I knew that learning effective, evidence-based therapeutic skills would not be straightforward.