Residents: Join APA’s 100% Club

That’s the message that APA’s Division of Education, Minority, and National Programs is sending to psychiatry residency programs throughout the U.S. and Canada in an effort to encourage residents to join APA and to do so with other trainees in their programs.

Those training programs whose residents all become APA members in the near future get a little something extra from the Association, according to Division Director Deborah Hales, M.D. The first 10 residency programs with 100 percent membership in APA will be asked to submit a photo of their program members—residents, training directors, and department chair—and the photo will be turned into a poster to be mailed to every medical school in the U.S. and Canada to encourage medical students to join APA. These residents will also be given a 25 percent discount on membership dues after their first year of membership. (The first year of membership at the national level of APA is free for residents and $80 thereafter for U.S. residents and $50 for Canadian residents. Membership for medical students is free.)

“The 100% Club and poster contest is a way to involve training directors and department chairs in promoting APA membership to their residents,” said Hales. “Not only do their residents benefit from APA membership—which includes a discount for purchases from American Psychiatric Publishing Inc.—but the training programs themselves benefit from the publicity. Their program is featured on a poster mailed to student affairs deans at every medical school.”

The University of Hawaii and the Naval Medical Center in San Diego are the two first programs to qualify for the posters, said Hales. All the posters will be published in Psychiatric News.