Planning Committee Chair Statement:
The overall goal of the McMaster University Annual Review Course in Psychiatry is to help build capacity among front line mental health providers related to the assessment, diagnosis and treatment of patients with mental health concerns.
The provision of mental health care primarily occurs in community and primary care settings, where a wide array of multidisciplinary team members (e.g., family physicians, nurse practitioners, nurses, social workers, psychologists, pharmacists, physician assistants, psychiatrists, etc.) work together to meet the complex needs of patients with mental illness.
Given ongoing specialist shortages across Canada, long ER wait times, and the expanding role of family physicians, nurse practitioners, and other primary care providers in the delivery of mental health services, the purpose of this educational activity is to offer an opportunity to learn practical, up-to-date, and evidence-based clinical pearls related to the provision of mental health care in the primary care setting. The initial iteration of the Review Course in 2018 was, in part, based on a needs assessment survey, to which we still refer to when needed. For the current iteration, we relied mainly on feedback obtained from participants of past iterations of the Review Course in Psychiatry, those from 2019, 2021 (including input from focused interviews with a small group of participants), 2022, and particularly those from 2023 (for example, this year, we have added a talk on measurement-based care, and metabolic monitoring based on this feedback). A multidisciplinary planning committee (e.g., including experts who work in both hospital and community-based settings, experts with various sub-specialty foci, etc.) was struck, and input was sought accordingly based on their expertise and clinical experience. The itineraries of past iterations of the Review Course were also reviewed for reference (as some topics change from year to year, and some need to stay the same). All the above sources were used in the creation of the 2024 iteration of the Review Course in Psychiatry.
