Global Health Training in US Graduate Psychiatric Education

Alexander C. Tsai, Gregory L. Fricchione, Rochelle P. Walensky, Courtney Ng, David R. Bangsberg, Vanessa B. Kerry
2014 Academic Psychiatry  
Objective-Global health training opportunities have figured prominently into medical students' residency program choices across a range of clinical specialties. To date, however, the national scope of global mental health education has not heretofore been systematically assessed. We therefore sought to characterize the distribution of global health training opportunities in U.S. graduate psychiatric education. Methods-We examined the web pages of all U.S. psychiatry residency training programs,
more » ... along with search results from a systematic Google query designed to identify global health training opportunities. Results-Of the 183 accredited U.S. psychiatry residency programs, we identified 17 programs (9.3%) offering 28 global health training opportunities in 64 countries. Ten psychiatry residency programs offered their residents opportunities to participate in one or more elective-based rotations, eight offered research activities, and six offered extended field-based training. Most global health training opportunities occurred within the context of externally administered, institution-wide initiatives generally available to residents from a range of clinical specialties, rather than within internally administered departmental initiatives specifically tailored for psychiatry residents. Conclusions-There are relatively few global health training opportunities in U.S. graduate psychiatric education. These activities have a clear role in enhancing mastery of Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education core competencies, but important challenges related to program funding and evaluation remain. Keywords International; Public Health; Cross-Cultural Psychiatry; World Health -psychiatry residents U.S. medical trainees have increasingly expressed interest in global health programs at all levels of training, ranging from university pre-medical education (1) to undergraduate (2) and graduate (3, 4) medical education. Global health training opportunities have figured prominently into medical students' residency program choices in such varied disciplines as emergency medicine (5) , family medicine (6), internal medicine (7, 8), and pediatrics (9).
doi:10.1007/s40596-014-0092-0 pmid:24664609 pmcid:PMC4111765 fatcat:rcrzjrfee5a2fptgg55uo4cava