Your Career Navigator, Issue 4 - College of Medicine - University of ...

Your Career Navigator, Issue 4http://www.medicine.usask.ca /education/careerQUOTES OF THEMONTHThe future belongsto those who believein the beauty of theirdreams.- Eleanor RooseveltIt is much moreimportant to knowwhat sort of patienthas a disease thanwhat sort of disease apatient has.- Sir William OslerThe art of medicine isin amusing a patientwhile nature affectsthe cure.- VoltaireCareer Development CornerRESIDENT CAREER DEVELOPMENTBy Vern Bennett, MD, FRCPCResidency Program DirectorPsychiatry, U of S“By believing passionately in something that does not yetexist, we create it. The nonexistent is whatever we have notsufficiently desired”.- Nikos KazantzakisResident career development provides tangible and intangible rewards forresidents, the faculty engaged in residency education and our province. TheRoyal College standards for Residency training programs and the associated roleresponsibilities set out for residency training committees sets the stage to designeffective and integrated career counseling strategies as early as PGY1. Althoughstandards and role responsibilities maintain some degree of motivation forestablishing strategies to assist residents with career development, other factorsare equally and arguably of greater significance.Paul J Myers writes, “Communication – the human connection – is the key topersonal and career success”. A department searching for an enriched careerguidance process may first need to examine their existing communicationstrategies and level of collaboration with the resident and their family. It istherefore, partly through deliberate design, yet significantly complementedby the prevailing teaching and clinical practice milieu within the Departmentof Psychiatry, from which emerge several fundamental principles for guidingresident career development.• The majority of teaching faculty manifests a genuine interest in the careeraspirations of residents; a level of engagement that is guided, at least in part, bythe principles embodied in mentorship.• The Department of Psychiatry acknowledges that the most efficient approachto address Psychiatry resource needs in Saskatchewan is through the retention ofSaskatchewan graduates.• Subspecialty interests are identified early during the resident’s trainingexperience and tangible support is provided by fostering elective choices,selective rotation design, and securing fellowship sponsorship.• The new Specialty Training Requirements (2008) created the imperative toaddress critical resource deficiencies in clinical areas such as consultation liaisonpsychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, child psychiatry, and psychiatric practice withexpertise in different psychotherapy modalities.