Objective: Authors assessed the benefit of including medical students on geropsychiatric home-visits. Method: Medical students, during their psychiatry clerkship, were assigned to a home-visit group (N=43) or control group (N=81). Home-visit participants attended the initial visit of a home-bound geriatric patient. The Maxwell-Sullivan Attitude…

Objective: This article reviews the current status and recent trends in the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology (ABPN) psychiatric subspecialties and discusses the implications of those trends as well as several key questions whose answers may well determine subspecialty viability. Methods: Data are presented on specialty and subspecialty…

Objective: The authors describe the current characteristics of geriatrics training within general psychiatry training programs. Methods: In the fall of 2006, a survey was mailed and made available online to all U.S. psychiatric residency program directors (N=181). Results: The response rate was 54% (n=97). Of the responding psychiatry programs,…

Objective: The authors determine whether Massachusetts General Hospital's residency graduates believed their training reflected their current practice activities. Method: The authors surveyed 134 graduates from MGH and MGH-McLean residency classes from 1983 to 2003. Subjects ranked their satisfaction with different components of training on a…

Objective: There is a critical need for new researchers in psychiatry, including subspecialties such as geriatric psychiatry. Many existing research training programs focus on post-doctoral-level trainees and involve several years of hands-on research with experienced mentors at major universities. Although valuable, such programs have some…

Objective: The authors describe the approval processes for subspecialties and the mechanisms for certification and recertification and review the status of training programs and numbers of diplomates with subspecialty certification. Methods: Published information and relevant data bases were reviewed. To date, 5,327 child and adolescent…

Background: Gender bias has been reported in the diagnosis and treatment of patients with a variety of illnesses. In the context of our 10-station fourth year Objective Structured Clinical Evaluation, we queried whether this could influence diagnosis in a geriatric case. Case writers hypothesized that, due to this bias, the female standardized…

Objective: This study examines the issues influencing psychiatrists' decisions to provide care to the under-served geriatric population. Methods: Community-based psychiatrists who see geriatric patients participated in focus group discussions exploring factors that influence the characteristics of their current practices. Results: Personal themes,…

OBJECTIVE: There is an urgent need for research training in psychiatry at early career stages, especially in geriatric psychiatry. The authors describe their first-year experience with the Summer Training in Aging Research Topics--in Mental Health (START-MH), a new federally funded national-level training program intended to offer intensive…