Help regarding what to look for in a psych residency.

[promotemma]

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I'm sure I could scour the threads and dig up the information but I was hoping someone could at least point me in the right direction. I envision myself working within an organization that provides mental health, medical care as well as community resources to advance the individual. That is kind of my goal within psychiatry. There seems to be a vast array in types of programs. I'm not an intellectual, I'm mostly a caring hard worker. I have solid board scores and pretty good evals. What kind of traits or key words should I be looking for in programs? I've seen OHSU's public psychiatry program that looks pretty good. I would love to be able to develop the skill sets required to work with a multidisciplinary team with an integrated approach to the individual. I wasn't a psychology major and I've only done one psych rotation, so please forgive my ignorance. Is there a name or some keywords I should be using to more quickly filter through the residency programs to distill out the types of programs I'm looking for? Any help would be appreciated and thanks in advance. If I should already know these things, I'm sorry.

 

[medicalperson123]

There are quite a few things that go into choosing the right program for you. You want to consider location, cost of living, etc. Besides that, it is good to ask how much supervision they have as usually more supervision hours is a good sign of dedicated faculty and teaching. Also, ask about protected didactic time and study time. Educational leave and do they pay any travel expenses (for conferences) and educational money (for books, online study tools etc) is important. Ask about moonlighting opportunities if that is important to you as well. Lastly, I'd say that depending on what you want to do you might want a program that has fellowships, as that usually means better learning experiences in those areas and the opportunity to stay on for fellowship in the same place.

 

[Armadillos]

Also you can check out what sort of clinic settings people can rotate in during their 3rd and 4th years. Some programs have a super wide range so your experience could be very different depending where you choose to rotate.