A Welcoming Place for the Elaboration of the Caregiver's Suffering: Reflection on the Ethics Training Curriculum at the University of Sherbrooke's Psychiatry Program

Abstract

The specificities of mental health care combined with the contemporary context of health care make ethical issues particularly salient in psychiatry. Thus, residents in training in this medical discipline may be particularly exposed to difficult situations involving an ethical dilemma, which can be a cause of distress and moral suffering. Future physicians are equipped with knowledge and skills that should enable them to address the ethical issues inherent to clinical practice, as teaching of this discipline is now a requirement for accreditation of residency training programs in Canada. However, many questions remain about the design of a valid and effective clinical ethics education for these young practitioners. In this essay, we attempt to sketch out possible answers to this wide range of questions, based on our experience as residents. After having examined some of the specificities of the ethics curriculum which we benefited from in the psychiatry residency program at the University of Sherbrooke, we analyze how its structure can be a good example for ethics training of other young professionals, that is, residents. More specifically, we highlight how creating a space to acknowledge the suffering of the care giver in-training can have an impact on their own sensitivity to the suffering of the patient who they are treating.