Evaluation of a saliva alcohol test stick as a therapeutic adjunct in an alcoholism treatment program.

This study was designed to evaluate the clinical usefulness of a saliva alcohol dipstick by comparing dipstick saliva alcohol concentrations to simultaneous blood and urine alcohol concentrations. The sample consisted of 211 saliva tests and blood alcohol concentrations and 189 urine alcohol concentrations. The dipsticks had a specificity of 0.965, a sensitivity of 0.895, a positive predictive value of 0.850, a negative predictive value of 0.977 and a Pearson's product moment correlation coefficient of 0.609 for blood alcohol concentrations and salivary alcohol concentrations, suggesting that the saliva dipstick is useful as a qualitative test in certain settings but is less useful than previously reported as a semiquantitative test.

Supervision: the residents' perspective.

Psychotherapy supervision is an essential aspect of psychiatric residency training. The authors surveyed the attitudes of the PGY I-IV psychiatry residents in the Baylor College of Medicine residency toward psychotherapy supervision. The results were compared to those of a previous nationwide survey of Canadian psychiatry residents. The Baylor residents identified three factors as the most important elements of satisfactory supervision: the supervisor's teaching ability, rapport between the supervisor and the trainee, and the supervisor's fund of knowledge.