Religious coping with chronic pain.

This study examined the role of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping in a sample of 61 chronic pain patients from a midwestern pain clinic. Participants described their chronic pain and indicated their use of religious and nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping strategies. Results supported a multidimensional conceptualization of religious coping that includes both positive and negative strategies. Positive religious coping strategies were associated significantly with positive affect and religious outcome after statistically controlling for demographic variables. In contrast, measures of negative religious coping strategies were not associated significantly with outcome variables. Several significant associations also were found between nonreligious cognitive-behavioral coping strategies and outcome variables. The results underscore the need for further research concerning the contributions of religious coping in adjustment to chronic pain. Practitioners of applied psychophysiology should assess their chronic pain patients' religious appraisals and religious coping as another important stress management strategy.

Part-time Residency Training in Psychiatry.

Part-time training in psychiatry has largely remained informaland has been utilized only by about 1% of psychiatry residents. This is puzzling considering the large number of women who have children during residency. In addition to aiding residents with child care needs, part-time training is also of potential value to dual-career families, handicapped residents with mobility problems, physicians seeking mid-career changes, and as a solution to those with funding problems. In this article, we present the case for systematic planning for part-time training based on experience in our program and a survey of other programs. We address the practical issues of arranging inpatient and outpatient clinical experiences, on-call arrangements, didactic programs, funding dilemmas, supervision, and evaluation.