"Credentials Consciousness": Stimulus for Continuing Education and Peer Review in Psychiatry
DONALD H. NAFTULIN M.D.1
1 Associate Professor of Psychiatry and Director of the Continuing Education Division, Department of Psychiatry, University of Southern California School of Medicine, 2025 Zonal Ave., Los Angeles, Calif. 90033
The author surveys various issues related to continuing education in psychiatry, including the delineation of "credentialing" as a stimulus to the kind of quality control that the health care system seems to be moving toward. He considers the patient-management approach to identifying professional competence the most effective means of implementing continuing education; this approach is relevant to peer review and effective delivery of mental health services.
