Academic Psychiatry versus Patient Care—A Personal View

Abstract

Teaching and research and Membership Examination orientation, this is the new religion and the major preoccupation now of every ‘good’ psychiatrist. There is a growing attitude that day-to-day patient care, unless there is a new experiment or innovation, is too familiar and therefore contemptible, and consultants have better things to do. Is it not time to reserve some credit to old-fashioned good patient care, to which all medical people, even the most academic, pay lip service. After all, to win resources doctors have usually to prove to the public the benefits to patient care and not to teaching and research.