How psych applicants evaluate residency programs

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

Greetings from my second post in a single night!

I was looking over the criteria that psych applicants used to choose which programs to apply to:

And I'm wondering how applicants evaluated a couple of different qualities:

• "Quality of educational training and curriculum"
  • Beyond a prestigious name, how can you evaluate this? What relevant information should I look for on their website, and what questions should I ask residents?
• "Appropriate balance between faculty supervision and resident responsibility for patient care"
  • First: is this a component of what makes a program a "workhorse" program? Or is that more related to call schedule?
  • Second: I haven't really seen much variation on this during my third-year rotations. The resident pre-rounds, the team rounds with the attending, the resident presents the case, resident and attending discuss the plan, resident writes the note, the attending signs off and usually doesn't change or add anything, and admissions throughout the day operate in a pretty similar manner.
    • How much does this actually vary? I guess it must be a lot for applicants to rank this factor so highly?
    • What are other ways that the balance of responsibility might manifest in a program's culture?
      • How do I learn more about this culture in an individual program?
    • How do applicants learn their preferences regarding level of supervision vs. autonomy? For example, I think I would like a lot of hand-holding, discussion, and hmming and hawing now, but I'm only a medical student, so most of this is still very novel to me.

I'd really appreciate y'all's perspectives on this. Additionally, would be great to hear any other advice for the prudent soon-to-be psych applicant.

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[phonyreal98]

Greetings from my second post in a single night!

I was looking over the criteria that psych applicants used to choose which programs to apply to:

• "Quality of educational training and curriculum"
  • Beyond a prestigious name, how can you evaluate this? What relevant information should I look for on their website, and what questions should I ask residents?

For most people looking for places that have a variety of different training environments is a good way to evaluate quality of educational training. For example, some programs I interviewed at the residents really only rotated at their academic medical center. The program I ended up at has required rotations at the academic medical center, the local VA, an urban community site, and a rural community site and there are well established elective options at suburban sites, college campuses, and state hospitals. If you have an interest in a particular subspecialty or populations, then ask at the interview what specific experiences you can do to work in that subspecialty or with that population.

 

[Merovinge]

Greetings from my second post in a single night!

I was looking over the criteria that psych applicants used to choose which programs to apply to: View attachment 385976

And I'm wondering how applicants evaluated a couple of different qualities:

• "Quality of educational training and curriculum"
  • Beyond a prestigious name, how can you evaluate this? What relevant information should I look for on their website, and what questions should I ask residents?
• "Appropriate balance between faculty supervision and resident responsibility for patient care"
  
  • First: is this a component of what makes a program a "workhorse" program? Or is that more related to call schedule?
  • Second: I haven't really seen much variation on this during my third-year rotations. The resident pre-rounds, the team rounds with the attending, the resident presents the case, resident and attending discuss the plan, resident writes the note, the attending signs off and usually doesn't change or add anything, and admissions throughout the day operate in a pretty similar manner.
    
    • How much does this actually vary? I guess it must be a lot for applicants to rank this factor so highly?
    • What are other ways that the balance of responsibility might manifest in a program's culture?
      
      • How do I learn more about this culture in an individual program?
    • How do applicants learn their preferences regarding level of supervision vs. autonomy? For example, I think I would like a lot of hand-holding, discussion, and hmming and hawing now, but I'm only a medical student, so most of this is still very novel to me.

I'd really appreciate y'all's perspectives on this. Additionally, would be great to hear any other advice for the prudent soon-to-be psych applicant.

Yes this is asking about time for learning rather than being workhorses. Every reasonable program is designed to be resident independent, although none really are 100%. As in everything in life there is a spectrum from your attending is being asked to generate 5000 RVUs independently AND supervise you to your attending is being asked to just help train you and gets a flat salary.

The number of patients/day on IP units will impact how much time you have with each pt/how much time you have to learn as will the number of patients/day your attendings see. I have heard of some programs with crazy low numbers and some with crazy high, but most places fall in the 5 (for interns) to 10 (for pgy2 and up) per day on IP, with more specialized units potentially being a bit different if there is added complexity.

I generally think you can just see how happy a resident is with the program, how much time they have for non-medicine activities, what their social lives are, etc to judge the workload. There is plenty of places for inductive reasoning to give you a good feel when you talk to the current residents.

 

[tr]

Location is nowhere on that list? Really??

 

[wellbutrin.girlfriend]

Location is nowhere on that list? Really??

So glaring now that you mention it! Strange.

 

[Stagg737]

Location is nowhere on that list? Really??

Yea, kind of shocked since location is often top reason for our program choice. Also several programs were at the very bottom specifically due to locations. Even if it were just a write-in option, I can’t imagine it being less of a factor than “opportunity for international travel”.

 

[comp1]

Geography is the single greatest factor, by far, for the vast majority of people looking for residency. And it SHOULD BE. Statistically you are very likely to end up living where you do residency. That said, the program can't really change that... So surveying it probably isn't all that helpful.

 

[Merovinge]

Geography is the single greatest factor, by far, for the vast majority of people looking for residency. And it SHOULD BE. Statistically you are very likely to end up living where you do residency. That said, the program can't really change that... So surveying it probably isn't all that helpful.

Would still definitely be worth seeing how applicants rank it as far as importance, particularly to know if that changes over time.

I know for me, it was important, but definitely not THE most important. As someone who was single and willing to travel, I would certainly have considered better fit/stronger programs even if it meant an unknown geography.

 

[mistafab]

This seems totally wrong. I took half the country off the table before applying. Geography was the strongest “no” factor prior to applying anywhere. I fit the programs around the geography, not the other way around.

Also, programs are so different from eachother - there really is no “standard.”

There is also a culture difference between “resident run” and “could run tomorrow if no residents showed up” that goes top to bottom. It also doesnt necessarily mean workhorse or chill. People really only see their own program and dont know whats out there. Even the top programs can be very different from eachother.