Student Interest Group Recruitment

[Midwest Psych]

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I'm a faculty member at a large university with both an allopathic and osteopathic medical school. For the past 8 years I've struggled to field and maintain a Psychiatry interest group.
What advice to students have on recruitment to and maintenance of an interest group?
I know that you are all extremely busy (I've been there many years ago), and it's hard to do much outside of class work.
How do you decide what and when to join for extracurriculars, and what types of activities are you most interested in?
Thanks,
MP

 

[cpants]

Free food always gets them in the door. After that you will have to have events and experiences lined up to keep them there. Some underclassmen may be interested in some shadowing opportunities especially if you can set them up at interesting places: local hospital for the criminally insane, drug rehabs, etc.

One of the best ways you can keep your group stocked is to work something out with the administration to get fourth year elective credit for your members. Several groups at my school have this. You do a certain number of hours in a psych clinic, for example, over the course of your four years, and in return you get 2 weeks' elective credit (translation: 2 more weeks vacation) during fourth year.

 

[Midwest Psych]

Thanks for the info. I still like free food, even though I've been out of medical school for a long time.

 

[quepatho]

One of the best ways you can keep your group stocked is to work something out with the administration to get fourth year elective credit for your members. Several groups at my school have this. You do a certain number of hours in a psych clinic, for example, over the course of your four years, and in return you get 2 weeks' elective credit (translation: 2 more weeks vacation) during fourth year.

I would totally have gone for that if my school had anything remotely like that.

Interesting research opportunities tend to be the main thing that my school's interest groups have to offer. Also, my school's interest groups did a good job of advertising information about matching into the specialty - what do residencies look for, how stressful is the match, what are the requirements for the specialty, why do students choose that specialty. I went to some of those meetings to learn more about why the 4th years chose what they chose.

 

[DrBowtie]

Thanks for the info. I still like free food, even though I've been out of medical school for a long time.

Agree with cpants. The interest groups in my school rely almost as much on the faculty as the students to show up.

Interest groups thrive on largely 1st and 2nd year students as 3rd years are often busy and work erratic schedules and 4th years have decided what they are doing so you'll only see those that are going into the field already.

The key is getting a core group of interested students to help recruit their friends. To get this key group you need adequate mentors.

The mentors should ideally offer shadowing experiences in a variety of settings or at least be willing to make a phone call to another colleague in the subsetting they are interested in as well as have student involvement in research projects available for both summertime and during the school year.

I don't think there is a shortage of people who are interested from the get go, the key is keeping them interested with the above. The more you involve the students in the department, the more word of mouth spreads about how awesome the people in the field are.

 

[OveractiveBrain]

Getting them in the door requires a good amount of manipulation. The "carrots and sticks." Since you aren't going to penalize them for not coming (no sticks) you have to make your carrots shiny.

Free Food is probably the strongest motivator for the M1, maybe the M2. After that, people get tired of the same free food (pizza, salad, Mediterranean burrito) and it loses any draw. Don't feel bad spending a significant portion of your "med student budget" on food. Being different, having enough for everyone, and having good food can make a huge difference in where people show up for their lunch hour meeting.

Be sure not to conflict. Pick a day where nothing is going on. Pick a day not near an exam, not on the same day as some other "bigger" event (like AMA, Women in medicine, or some other such interest group), and one where people are likely to be at school (some popular afternoon class or a mandatory TBL in the morning). This could be problematic as there are often MANY interest groups. You have to bide your time and pick a day with the most availability for the most students. From it sounds like, you will have to do several.

Offer something other than "this is what psych is about." I think psych, probably more than any other field, carries a negative stigma with it. People don't realize how interesting it is until after they do it. As an M1 people are all about SURGERY! CARDIOLOGY! MD-ANDERSON! without really knowing why. If you can give a good reason to show up like "requirements for getting a residency of your choosing" or something catchy like "ethical debate about the imprisonment of psychaitric patients" (which appeals to the idealistic M1 mindset) to get them in the door, you can then spend some time about "hey, I want to do an interest group."

Remember, this is just to get people in the door. Eventually, when your interest group has a strong following anyhow, you may not have to spend so much effort or cash on getting people to come. You may even get a bigger budget to keep up the show (especially when people show).

Beyond getting them in the door, there has to be something to hold people. I think your message is crucial at the outset. Are you going to be an interest group that meets twice a year only? What can you offer students throughout the year? What types of advantages can some one in your interest group be offered. Surgery has suturing clinics and connections to surgeons to get into surgery. Medicine can do IVs. Anesethesia intubations. Cool hands on stuff. What can psych offer that's cool for someone who knows only that the brain is in the skull?

Finally, the absolute bottom line is that why you want an interest group can't be because everyone else does, or because you want a place for people interested in psych to gather. If that were enough, you wouldn't have to come to SDN for ideas on how to maintain your group. The why has to be more than that, going beyond some superficial layer. If you can appeal to the hearts and souls of people NOT interested in psychiatry (even if it extrapolates to something like ethical issues which are often missed in other fields' training,or medical missions for mental health), you certainly can capture the people who ARE interested in psychiatry. Then, once your why is clear, you keep up the flow, once a month, three times a semester, SOMETHING that keeps them coming back.

Summary: Use food and timing to get them in the door. Keep the interest group flowing by meeting regularly, offering something special, and always remembering that WHY you do something is the more important than WHAT you do.

 

[DrDrToBe]

Most of the interest groups at my school have a weekly/ bi-monthly/monthly seminar series. The key is to get student leaders to help organize these, because the students recruit their friends (plus they blast the student chat-lists repeatedly each week to remind students to come). The seminar series range from journal clubs for the IM interest group, awesome intubation/suturing etc workshops for EMED, resident/student/faculty mixers for radiology (they have so much money, they have wine and cheese mixers at a posh wine bar off campus). The psych interest group does stuff with the Klingenstein fellows, and they have a dinner lecture series where they go through development and child psychiatry (pretty popular because they sometimes have parents bring their kids by so lots of peds folks go to that too); also this quarter they covered some stuff that's on the boards in a couple of the lectures, so a bunch of M2's showed up to that.

Ps...just to echo what everyone has said- ALL of the above mentioned seminar series have food. And if you serve pizza, then the topic had better be off the wall interesting because pretty much no one shows up for pizza. It's gotten to the point that when events are organized, the flyer actually states what's on the menu.

 

[Midwest Psych]

I am VERY impressed by the volume of thoughtful feedback that I have already received on this subject. Free food seems to be in the lead, but I agree strongly with the need to not conflict with your schedules. I wish we had forums like this when I was a medical student. Do faculty members frequently interface with students on this particular site or is it pretty infrequent? I often feel like we try to teach the students but don't necessarily know very much/understand about the current medical students.

 

[Dwindlin]

Free Food is probably the strongest motivator for the M1, maybe the M2. After that, people get tired of the same free food (pizza, salad, Mediterranean burrito) and it loses any draw. Don't feel bad spending a significant portion of your "med student budget" on food. Being different, having enough for everyone, and having good food can make a huge difference in where people show up for their lunch hour meeting.

I am a rep. for my schools EM Interest Group and I actually just wanted to second this. Overactive made a lot of good points, but this one I think is one of the best to get people in the door, and hopefully they will like what you have to say and keep coming.

Our EMIG makes it a point NOT to do things like pizza, burritos, etc. Some of the food we did this year included chinese, indian, BBQ, etc. I always got tons of comments about our food, and most of the time people liked what they heard and kept coming and getting more involved.

 

[quepatho]

In support of the free food promoters, I know a bunch of interest group leaders realized this year that you really have to aggressively ADVERTISE your free food - it doesn't matter how *much* free food you have or if you're serving caviar if no one knows that you have it. 😛

 

[OveractiveBrain]

I am VERY impressed by the volume of thoughtful feedback that I have already received on this subject. Free food seems to be in the lead, but I agree strongly with the need to not conflict with your schedules. I wish we had forums like this when I was a medical student. Do faculty members frequently interface with students on this particular site or is it pretty infrequent? I often feel like we try to teach the students but don't necessarily know very much/understand about the current medical students.

Some attendings offer their feedback, but mostly its just student-to-student interaction. Honestly, I've found it a bit peculiar that people in charge have been dropping questions in these forums. Its totally legit, and can actually lead to the benefit of future students. I like it. It might even clean up some of the tom-foolery on this forum. But it feels wrong.

My gut reaction was "AH! SOME ONE IMPORTANT! WHAT IF WE SAY SOMETHING WRONG!" I think SDN is a place where distraught, nervous, and anxious people can come post to their peers without fear of reprisal, in total anonymity, free from the burdens (perceived or real) of some administrator looming over them.

Encouraging administrators to come to the medical student forums might make some people frightened. Worse, the ONE administrator gives HIS opinion on a subject, and everyone accepts it as universal law...

In any case... open forum, ever adapting culture of online contributors... lets see where it goes!

 

[xanthomondo]

A lot of good advice above.

A few groups at my school offered raffles for attendance or signing up or whatever. A $20 Starbucks gift card, a textbook, etc.

Also at the first few meetings I would try to find activities to do that don't involve really long/complicated/boring lectures. The first specialty interest group I went to as an MS1 they held the resident lecture series. Everything was so over my head I just had to zone out for an hour and a half. I didn't return for quite some time.

 

[alwaysaangel]

I was leadership for a very large Emergency Medicine Interest Group for several years.

Food will get people to a given meeting, but it won't keep them involved.

Offering valuable information is what will keep students involved. Its a little easier for EM but I'm sure similar things can be done with pscyh.

We offer procedure workshops year round - this gives younger and older students direct contact with faculty and the chance to practice procedures they may not otherwise get to do. We do feed students at these but often have 30-50 students attend (and many more reply but we are unable to accomodate everyone)

We also offer multiple chances for career advising. Discussions on the field, individual mentoring, shadowing experience, application lectures, one-on-one application advice.

We basically offer something to every year of students and so we get members and keep them. Additionally, the board is a multiple year board (more 3rd and 4th years than 1st and 2nd) which help keeps the interest group active throughout all 4 years.

We also have a lot of things to plan to keep the board busy (and therefore board positions are coveted as they are legitimate things to list on ERAS and discuss at interviews). We plan a workshop a month, multiple lecture, and hold a national symposium every other year. Keeps the board and students busy.

You're already a step ahead, the most important part of a strong interest group is involved faculty. Just keep pushing for the group to grow in what it offers - the students will follow.

 

[quepatho]

You're already a step ahead, the most important part of a strong interest group is involved faculty. Just keep pushing for the group to grow in what it offers - the students will follow.

This.

 

[CatFactorial]

I'm a faculty member at a large university with both an allopathic and osteopathic medical school. For the past 8 years I've struggled to field and maintain a Psychiatry interest group.
What advice to students have on recruitment to and maintenance of an interest group?
I know that you are all extremely busy (I've been there many years ago), and it's hard to do much outside of class work.
How do you decide what and when to join for extracurriculars, and what types of activities are you most interested in?
Thanks,
MP

Our school's activity fair at the beginning of the year is where most people join various groups. In the group I'm in, what keeps attendance at events modestly high (at least for med students) is mostly the food. We're allocated enough money to host maybe three or so lunch talks (among other things), and it seems that attendance is proportional to food advertising.

 

[Law2Doc]

I'm a faculty member at a large university with both an allopathic and osteopathic medical school. For the past 8 years I've struggled to field and maintain a Psychiatry interest group.
What advice to students have on recruitment to and maintenance of an interest group?
I know that you are all extremely busy (I've been there many years ago), and it's hard to do much outside of class work.
How do you decide what and when to join for extracurriculars, and what types of activities are you most interested in?
Thanks,
MP

1. Free food gets folks in the door.
2. Good lectures/events can keep people interested for a period of time.
3. Mentors, networking and having seniors able to point to some faculty contact in the group as having written a good LOR/made a few phone calls to help them land the residency slot of their dreams gives a group a strong following in subsequent years.

Let's not kid ourselves. Folks don't joint these groups solely because they are interested, but because they see it as a useful step in pursuing a career choice. If you are going into neurology, you join the neurology group, not just because you want to hear neurology lecturers. (You get plenty of that in school itself). You want to be able to point to it as something professionally useful, and networking and strong faculty help can make it so. It's like the field of dreams -- if you build it, they will come. What you have to build is something career beneficial. Free Chinese food is just the means to get your word out.

 

[NERDY]

If you have stuff at lunchtime, you probably can only get year 1 and 2 students. Our school has a lot of stuff in the evening (5-6 pm) with dinner. That way, more students should be able to attend (of course not all rotations end by dinner time and some students are on nights) and you can go as late as you need to (without students having to rush back to class/lab).

I agree with PP about having food that is different than the usual pizza. Plus as a vegetarian, I always appreciate having a veggie option.

 

[Midwest Psych]

Here's what I've gleaned from reviewing the responses (sorry if I left anything out). Thank you again for taking the time to offer up such great responses (I feel that in a somewhat anonymous forum I may actually receive more truthful and nuanced responses than if I just grabbed our students in the hallways.)

1) Free food (but something international perhaps -- go easy on the pizza)
2) Offer shadowing opportunities
3) Investigate possibility of 4th year elective credit
4) Research opportunities
5) Information about matching and other aspects of career choice
6) Do not conflict with exams/studying for and recovering from exams and other important aspects of the med school schedule
7) Appeal to more students than those strictly interested in psych by promoting more universal areas of interest
8) Advertise
9) Offer skills builidng workshops
10) Networking opportunities (for better or worse, I agree this is important)

Wow, and all in a handy dandy Top Ten list.

Thanks again,
Midwest Psych

 

[pingouin]

Here's what I've gleaned from reviewing the responses (sorry if I left anything out). Thank you again for taking the time to offer up such great responses (I feel that in a somewhat anonymous forum I may actually receive more truthful and nuanced responses than if I just grabbed our students in the hallways.)

1) Free food (but something international perhaps -- go easy on the pizza)
2) Offer shadowing opportunities
3) Investigate possibility of 4th year elective credit
4) Research opportunities
5) Information about matching and other aspects of career choice
6) Do not conflict with exams/studying for and recovering from exams and other important aspects of the med school schedule
7) Appeal to more students than those strictly interested in psych by promoting more universal areas of interest
8) Advertise
9) Offer skills builidng workshops
10) Networking opportunities (for better or worse, I agree this is important)

Wow, and all in a handy dandy Top Ten list.

Thanks again,
Midwest Psych

I'm a Psych Student Interest Group president (x2 years), so my suggestions based on experience:

1) Put the food toward the front of the room rather than the back. This cuts down on the number of students who take the free food and skip out on the meeting. There will still be some who do, but most will stay at least for a few minutes, even if it is just out of shame.

6) When possible, also avoid conflicting with other groups' meetings. As a corollary to #1, if multiple lunch meetings are on the same day, students tend to gravitate toward whoever has the better food option.

7) We've increased attendance by hosting joint ventures with other student interest groups on topics relevant to multiple specialties. Eg, Eating Disorders: What Pediatricians and Primary Care Physicians Need to Know (hosted with the peds group and AMWA, panel included psychiatrists, psychologist, adolescent med).

9) Since psych is a rather procedure-poor specialty, we've worked out an agreement with our primary ECT psychiatrist that members can contact him to arrange a time to be in Same Day Surgery with him. We've discussed facilitating some sort of mock psych interviewing night but have no specific plans.

Also, we've added a community service aspect- our psych hospital tries to give one set of gently used clothing to every patient discharged, since many have few resources. For two years running, the PsychSIG has hosted a clothing drive to help refill the clothing closet. It's an easy project to do and lots of people get involved who would otherwise not consider participating in anything psychiatry-related.

Our group has thrived since we've achieved the perfect storm of 1) a few dedicated students willing to put in the effort, 2) a faculty advisor who is very involved, 3) a couple of residents who consistently participate and attend our meetings, and 4) a department chair who is very supportive of the group (occasionally attending meetings, creating a small budget for food so that we don't have to charge dues).

 

[Law2Doc]

I'm a Psych Student Interest Group president (x2 years), so my suggestions based on experience:

1) Put the food toward the front of the room rather than the back. This cuts down on the number of students who take the free food and skip out on the meeting. There will still be some who do, but most will stay at least for a few minutes, even if it is just out of shame.

6) When possible, also avoid conflicting with other groups' meetings. As a corollary to #1, if multiple lunch meetings are on the same day, students tend to gravitate toward whoever has the better food option.

7) We've increased attendance by hosting joint ventures with other student interest groups on topics relevant to multiple specialties. Eg, Eating Disorders: What Pediatricians and Primary Care Physicians Need to Know (hosted with the peds group and AMWA, panel included psychiatrists, psychologist, adolescent med).

9) Since psych is a rather procedure-poor specialty, we've worked out an agreement with our primary ECT psychiatrist that members can contact him to arrange a time to be in Same Day Surgery with him. We've discussed facilitating some sort of mock psych interviewing night but have no specific plans.

Also, we've added a community service aspect- our psych hospital tries to give one set of gently used clothing to every patient discharged, since many have few resources. For two years running, the PsychSIG has hosted a clothing drive to help refill the clothing closet. It's an easy project to do and lots of people get involved who would otherwise not consider participating in anything psychiatry-related.

Our group has thrived since we've achieved the perfect storm of 1) a few dedicated students willing to put in the effort, 2) a faculty advisor who is very involved, 3) a couple of residents who consistently participate and attend our meetings, and 4) a department chair who is very supportive of the group (occasionally attending meetings, creating a small budget for food so that we don't have to charge dues).

I love your numbering system.

 

[Ishiguro]

My school's peds interest group does a dinner for students at the chair's home early in the school year. Lots of residents and attendings go, and students truly get a chance to sit at tables with doctors and talk to them in a casual and meaningful way. Granted, pediatrics is always a popular interest group, but this is a VERY well-attended event every year. I think the key is that it happens super early in the year (September, if I remember correctly), which is a great time to snag first-year students who are hungry to meet doctors and in the mood to join organizations. It's a nice way for students to start thinking about how down-to-earth and great psychiatrists are (warm fuzzies), and for you to collect their e-mail and put them on your list for future events.

Shadowing opportunities can come a little later (popular, too, of course), but a little harder to wrangle commitments for those.

Also consider co-hosting lunch events with other interest groups, on topics of mutual importance.

For talks: Free food, and time things to happen over lunch or right after classes end for the day, rather than in the evening. I'll often stick around for a lunch talk, then head out to study.

Get a couple student leaders, too. Their ability to corral their classmates and their insight into scheduling, food choices, location, etc. will be valuable.

I love psychiatry, and I really hope you have some good results with this.

 

[pingouin]

I love your numbering system.

Well, given that each number was corresponding to a number on his top 10 list..... I thought it rather appropriate.


Or I can't count. One or the other.