A conjoint psychiatry-internal medicine program: development of a teaching and clinical model.

At a time when psychiatry's repertoire of successful treatment strategies is burgeoning and the public is seeking primary medical care with greater emphasis on humanistic issues, psychiatry has been paradoxically losing status and trainees, partly because it has failed to make its expertise integratable by nonpsychiatric physicians. In response to the educational and patient care deficiencies that result, two universities developed a teaching and clinical program that leads to partial integration of their departments of psychiatry and internal medicine. This collaborative approach includes a conjoint internal medicine-behavioral medicine inpatient unit and a residency program leading to Board eligibility in both specialties.