Med School Psychiatry Head Due in January

              SHREVEPORT TIMES - 10/1/74
Med School Psychiatry
Head Due in January
By Elaine King
Times Medical Writer
Dr John Tony Brauchi of
Kansas will assume duties at
Louisiana State University
Medical School in Shreveport
in January as chairman of the
department of psychiatry,
according to Dean Clifford G.
Grulee.
Dr. Brauchi, who is in
Shreveport through today for
meetings with medical school
officials, also has accepted
appointments as professor of
psychiatry and professor of
Family medicine and com-prehensive
care to begin in
January.
The psychiatrist explained
during an interview yesterday
that he wants to teach
residents in family medicine
how psychiatry can help a
family doctor in his practice.
It will be a "challenging
aspect" of his duties, he said.
Dr. Brauchi currently is
professor of psychiatry and
associate chairman of the
department of psychiatry at
the University of Kaasas
Medical Center.
In addition to his
professional duties, Dr.
Brauchi is serving the last few
months of a four-year term in
the Kansas State Legislature
as representative from John-son
County, a metropolitan
area near Kansas City, Mo.,
he said. His term expires in
January.
Drawing on his experience
as psychiatrist and his
first - hand view of politics,
Dr. Brauchi is writing
"Psycho - Politics," on the
games politicians play, he
said.
The games, he pointed out,
are the interworkings of
g i v e - a n d - t a k e among
legislators trying to get bills
passed.
Will he become involved in
Louisiana politics?
Dr. Brauchi laughed that
politics is not his main area of
interest, but added there are
interesting aspects of politics.
His term in the legislature,
he noted, made him aware of
the need of physicians to
serve small towns and
heightened his interest in
family medicine.
There has been a mistake in
the past, Dr. Brauchi feels, in
the way that a family-practice
resident was rotated through
s p e c i a l i t i e s , including
psychiatry, with no training in
being a family doctor using
those techniques.
Although his plans for the
department of psychiatry are
in primary planning stages,
Dr. Brauchi said he wants to
obtain more funds for the
department so that specialists
can be attracted in areas such
as child psychiatry.
More Research Needed
There is a need for more
psychiatric research here, he
said.
(Times Photo bv Gerald McCartv)
Psychiatry Chairman Dr. John Brauchi
. . . says psychiatry can aid family doctor
Because of the variety of
facilities used by the medical
school in its psychiatry
program, Dr. Brauchi said he
believes that there is a need to
tie all the satellite facilities
together administratively and
possibly physically.
An outpatient department is
needed for the psychiatry
program, Dr. Brauchi said.
He sees no way that the
medical school here can fail
as a medical center unless it
loses support of Shreveport
and the legislature.
A native of Sayre, Okla., Dr.
Brauchi said he decided to
accept the positions at the
medical school here because
of the "opportunity to build a
creative and imaginative
program, not just in
psychiatry, but in the whole
area of comprehensive care."
He selected the posts at the
medical school here over\^
offers from several other
schools, he said.
Dr. Brauchi's primary
research interest is "with
assessing the effectiveness of
certain psychotherapeutic
drugs."
His latest work was on
thinking disorders with
emphasis on identifying how
one forms concepts — by
memory, perception or
inference.
Three papers dealing with
that research are pending
publication, he said.
Dr. Brauchi is a graduate of
the University of Oklahoma
School of Medicine and served
rotating internship at
Hillcrest Medical Center,
Tulsa, Okla., and his residen-'.
cy in psychiatry at. University
Hospital in Oklahoma City
and the University of Kansas
Medical Center.
He has served .for the past
five years on the program
committee of the .American
Psychiatric Association and
was a member of ttie task
force that reviewed national
health insurance for the
National Intergovernmental
Relations Committee.
Members from the
legislatures of each state com-prised
the committee, which
returned a "conservative
report" that supported a
catastrophic coverage type of
national health insurance, he
said.
When will national health
insurance be reality?
Probably not within the next
year, he predicts. And when it
is implemented, Dr. Brauchi
expects it to be along the lines
of the catastrophic coverage
programs supported by Sen
Russell Long of Louisiana.