Mentor System

Many psychiatry residency programs are working on increasing cohesion between residents, as well as between residents and faculty members, in addition to encouraging progressive thinking within the department. Others are looking for methods to elevate residents’ morale and to infuse positive energy into residency training. I believe cohesion, high morale, and positive energy are not separate or separable goals. Each reinforces the other, so serving any one requires an integrated way that serves all three.

I suggest a mentor system that may help us achieve our common goals. In this system, residents and attendings are divided into teams. Each team consists of one resident from each class, a psychiatry attending, and a psychology attending. By doing this, we will have teams of five to six members, with the attendings acting as mentors to residents, and senior residents guiding junior residents in a friendly way.

Some of the benefits of this method are to increase cohesion and team work between residents of different classes and attendings, provide multiple and diverse levels of mentoring and cooperation, and enable teams to use units that can start their own projects or activities or the department’s projects or activities, help new residents move and adapt to the city and to the program, facilitate transition from one year to anther, provide help and support to struggling residents, and encourage the ones who are doing well.