wear whatever you like no one cares. I would suggest smart casual is a nice balance but also this depends on the where interview is, emphasis on casual on west coast. as long as you don't look homeless and are well groomed it's fine. i had my carefully cultivated pornstache for pre-interview (shaved off for the actual interview) it was a nice talking point.
Questions:
- what questions do you have for me? (you need to have LOTS of questions to ask your interviewers or things will get stagnant.)
-also be able to explain everything in your application including red flags). Questions asked should show some familiarity with the program, with psychiatry, and showcase your interests, abilities, talents etc.
Legit questions:
- What are the didactics like? are they protected? do residents have to answer pages or tend to clinical activities during didactics? are they well attended?
- how does supervision work? (there should be 2 hours a week of supervision during inpatient months - so if they suggest less be suspicious) - is there a good choice of supervisors? Are all supervisors MDs or are their psychologists supervising too? in what modalities is supervision available? (e.g. dynamic, CBT, supportive, IPT, psychopharm, CPT, DBT, hypnosis) (3/4 of my supervisors are psychologists and they tend to be more thoughtful and actually have training in how to supervise which is nice)
- are there patient caps on inpatient teams? how many patients do interns/residents carry? are they caps on admissions for calls? how many admits will residents typically do per shift?
- how does call work? is there home call? if so, is it really at home, or do residents have to be at the hospital more often than not? how is call supervised? what is the culture like in terms of calling attendings? is this encouraged or frowned upon? are weekends off or do you cover the inpatient units? do you keep your pager on all the time and expect to receive calls or does this go to an on-call service after hours? is the pager long-range (i.e. do you have to carry it out of state) or only local? is there back-up call and how does this work? do residents of back-up get paid if they have to come in?
- how good is the ancillary support? do social workers help you out on the wards and on call? are residents responsible for all pts in the ED or do social workers see all the patients first? do residents have to spend much time getting prior authorization for hospitalization, getting records from providers, finding shelter beds, making outpatient appointments? Do nurses other staff do lab draws etc or do residents end up doing this?
- do attendings help out with the notes? (e.g. attendings write notes 2x week at my program) do attendings help divide the work load? are attendings available for support/consultation and easily reachable?
- what is the work load like in terms of balance between education/service requirements? do attendings teach on rounds typically? is there pre-rounding?
- what is the culture like in terms of seeing patients overnight? (i.e. do you have to see all patients or not)
- do residents get good experience using TCAs, MAOIs, lithium, clozapine? (at most programs residents do not get any exposure to MAOIs, at many little/no with TCAs, and lithium and clozapine are often under-emphasized at many training programs)
- what are the minimum psychotherapy requirements in terms of cases seen? is there experience in group psychotherapy, family therapy, and couples therapy?
- is there the opportunity to learn treatments for personality disorder (e.g. DBT, mentalization-based treatment, schema-focused therapy?)
- what is the community psychiatry experience like? what kind of recovery oriented practices does the institution implement? are their peer-support workers? do residents have opportunity to learn social skills training, family work, CBT for schizophrenia? do they have opportunity to be part of PACT/ACT teams, do rehabilitation or recovery rotations?
-do residents get experience ordering and utilizing EEGs, MRIs, DaT and SPECT scans? (for dementia etc)
- is there access to psychological testing and neuropsychology? how much exposure to psychology/psychologists do residents have for team work, shared care, teaching, supervision?
- how good addictions exposure do residents get? do residents have opportunity to use methadone maintenance, suboxone, naltrexone (po and IM), antabuse, acamprosate etc? do residents get exposure to 12-step facilitation, CBT for relapse prevention, motivational interviewing? is there good exposure to detox both inpatient and outpatient? do residents get chance to use more novel interventions such as gabapentin, carbamazepine, divalproex in alcohol withdrawal? or more old school things like phenobarbital?
- do residents get exposure to evidence based treatments for PTSD such as prolonged exposure or cognitive processing therapy?
- is there decent child psychiatry exposure? do residents get a feel for a developmental approach? is there decent exposure to child and adult ADHD? what about how comfortable are people managing patients with intellectual disability and autistic spectrum disorders? are there opportunities for adult residents to get exposure in child psychotherapy (play therapy, TF-CBT, psychodynamic psychotherapy) - are there programs in PCIT, multisystemic psychotherapy, parent support groups/skills groups?
- are there opportunities to learn
- do residents have opportunity to read? are articles routinely provided by attendings, supervisors, for didactics? is there journal club? are more interesting readings provided (e.g. NYT or Atlantic articles? poetry, prose, plays etc?)
- is there a culture of evidence base practice here? do attendings explain or discuss the evidence base for their patient care decisions?
- do residents get exposure to using ECT? do they have appropriate cases for the ECT service?
- what is the patient diversity like? is there a good interpreter service? Is there good exposure to different ethnic/racial groups, patient populations, socioeconomic status, sexual minorities? different psychopathology from mild to wild?
- do residents get exposure to more uncommon psychiatric syndromes? (e.g. catatonia, delirious mania, Capgras syndrome, De Clerembault syndrome, morbid jealousy, FTD, autoimmune limbic encephalitis, Ganser syndrome, cerebral lupus etc)
- what are resident/faculty relations like? is resident feedback welcome, solicited and most importantly, acted upon?
- what is the forensic psychiatry experience like? are their opportunities for jail/prison rotations? is there a state hospital experience?
- what kind of elective opportunities are available? is it possible to do away electives at other programs, especially if wishing to do fellowship there? is it possible to do international electives? how much elective time is there and does this ever get lost for service requirements?
- are there opportunities for residents to get experience in pain medicine, sleep medicine, hospice and palliative medicine?
- do residents get to see interesting cases of the weird and wonderful?
- how is psychiatry regarded by the institution? is the service welcomed? are their threats to funding/security? any discussion of bed closures or downsizing of services?
- are faculty well supported here? is there good faculty retention here? if there has been a high turnover, how is the program handling this? is good faculty mentoring available? (important because **** flows down so if the faculty are poorly treated you will be at mercy too)
- what inhouse moonlighting opportunities are available? what about other moonlighting opportunities? is this frowned upon? are there requirements for residents to moonlight? (some programs use PRITE percentile as condition for moonlighting, though they wont be able to do this after 2016 as the percentile wont be reported so this may be a moot point for you)
- how much educational/professional leave is available? (for example I had 4 weeks of educational leave last year)
- how easy is it to schedule vacation? can you schedule or is this something that is pre-set by the program? do residents ever have vacation requests denied? are residents allowed to take full weeks off at a time? (some programs dont allow all weeks to be taken as full weeks) can residents take several weeks off at a time?
- is the program supportive of maternity leave? how does this work? how many residents typically are on maternity leave in a given year? (this is important even for men for several reasons: it gives you a sense of how supportive program is in general, and also if all the residents are off on maternity leave then you might be left covering additional call! be warned!)
- what kinds of jobs do residents get after graduation? is there a preferred route for graduates of this program (e.g. academics, research, community, managed care, group PP, individual PP, med mx only, psychotherapy only etc)
you might want to rephrase some of these so they are not confrontational but these are the kinds of things you want to find out.
