APA Annual Meeting Course Available
- H. Paul Putman III, MD
- Mar 26
- 2 min read
Updated: 4 days ago
I'm directing the course "Treatment Failure in Psychiatric Practice: Clinical Reasoning and Management at the American Psychiatric Association Annual Meeting this May in Los Angeles. Full details are below. Practitioners are invited to join us and encouraged to register before it fills.
Treatment Failure in Psychiatric Practice: Clinical Reasoning and Management
Tuesday, May 20, 2025 1:00 PM - 5:00 PM PDT
Location: Room 150 A, Los Angeles Convention Center
Description
Today in psychiatric practice, 20-60% of psychiatric treatment attempts eventually become labeled “treatment resistant." As second opinions identify remaining treatment options in over two thirds of these cases, this outcome likely results from unwitting errors in cognition, incomplete assessments, inadequate treatment planning, poor adherence, and dysfunctional therapeutic alliances. Participants will discover the common cognitive errors that students, professionals, and experts make that lead to suboptimal care or treatment failure, how concepts are formed (with steps to identify failed conceptualizations and creatively reformulate them), and methods to more accurately assess the literature for applicability to their patients. During this course we will assess our own diagnostic reasoning, identifying opportunities for improvement, review the value and use of semi-structured interviews (with time for practice), learn how to purposefully and effectively apply various methods of cognitive analysis, appreciate the importance of reducing our reliance on memory, improve bidirectional patient communication skills, learn to repair ruptures in the therapeutic alliance, and appreciate how the illness behavior of our patients is influenced by our interactions with them. We will also cover underappreciated causes of treatment failure, and how to constantly adjust our assessments to incorporate new information. We will identify steps to counter narrowing of our long-term expert mindset, and resist overconfidence as we sift through the complexity of our clinical tasks, becoming more comfortable with uncertainty and ambiguity, while avoiding indecision. We will reinforce the essential value of multi-source feedback, demonstrating how to seek, receive, provide, and utilize it. As a result, clinicians will be better able to anticipate any shortcomings in their efforts to find the best treatment outcomes. It is more effective to embrace these than to suppress, ignore, or redefine them without utility. Any treatment impasse is an opportunity to reconceptualize and discover better answers. Instead of expecting ideal outcomes from initial efforts, we provide more value by anticipating roadblocks and persistently altering treatments as needed.
Master Course
Diagnosis/Assessment
Learning Objectives | Objective One: Identify common cognitive errors clinicians make in practice. Objective Two: Critically assess your own conceptual and problem solving skills, identifying opportunities for improvement. Objective Three: Contrast the concepts of treatment resistance and treatment failure. Objective Four: Identify underappreciated causes of treatment failure. Objective Five: Better able to develop and manage effective therapeutic alliances within a diverse population. |
Track Alignment | General Psychiatry Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Geriatric Psychiatry Residents, Fellows and Medical Students Early Career International Medical Graduates (IMGs) Paid Course ($) |
Hope to see you there!
Comments