Dr. Twersky-Kengmana is an early-career psychiatrist, trained in a mainstream residency, and she prescribes medication to the majority of her patients. Yet, about 10% of her practice is psychoanalytic. In this article, she discusses the current status of psychoanalysis, some of the evidence for its efficacy, and why she has found it so useful for her patients.

Patient details have been fictionalized in this presentation of real cases that represent common critical issues.

Psychoanalytic training may not be right for you, but here are some analytic concepts that can be useful to anyone practicing psychiatry.

It’s important to understand what bias is not. Bias is not fraud, as it does not involve intentional prejudice. Bias is also not random error, which creates deviation in results strictly by chance, and can be mitigated with a large enough study sample. Put simply, bias has to do with the unintentional skewing of results due to human failings such as poor trial design or unconscious wishes for desirable outcomes.

This article will present ethical considerations of the ACA for psychiatrists. For the most part, ethical dilemmas for psychiatrists will occur in the quality and efficiency improvement category. Particular areas of concern are new innovations to improve quality and bring down costs, integrated health systems, linking payments to quality outcomes, payment bundling, and paying physicians based on value rather than volume.

In this article Dr. Twersky-Kengmana discusses the most frequently used codes for outpatient psychiatry, and other information that should help streamline the coding process and make it clearer and more bearable.