Only Alex Trebek was missing from a good-natured, knowledge-based competition among psychiatry residency programs that culminated at APA's 2007 annual meeting in San Diego in May. The competition, inspired by the TV game show “Jeopardy” and known as “MindGames,” began months ago with a qualifying round of online questions on a wide variety of topics in psychiatry.
Emerging as the victor was the three-person team representing the residency program at the State University of New York at Buffalo: Vijay Amarendran, M.D., Shakeel Raza, M.D., and Robin Warner, M.D. They bested residents from the University of Pennsylvania and Wayne State University. The residency program also recently joined APA's 100% Club (see
APA's 100% Club Gains Another Member Program).
The prize was more than academic: the winners took home a handsome trophy proving their right to brag to SUNY friends and colleagues that they had won the first-ever national competition testing the collective knowledge of residents in a psychiatry residency program.
The teams that advanced to the San Diego finals were the three highest scorers on a computerized test, which consisted of 150 questions that had to be completed within 60 minutes. Finalists received $5,000 to come to San Diego to participate in the final round and were honored at the March meeting of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training in San Juan (Psychiatric News, April 20).
The live competition in San Diego turned up the pressure by using a“ Jeopardy”-like format: teams accumulated or lost points according to the point value of each question they attempted to answer. Questions covered a wide variety of topics in psychiatry and were designed to be entertaining as well as informative.
There was no one winning question, according to Dr. Deborah Hales, director of APA's Division of Education and “MindGames” creator.
“Amazingly, everyone got the final 'Jeopardy' question, which was: 'Walter Hess and Egas Moniz were awarded the Nobel Prize in physiology and medicine in 1949. What was this for?' The answer was “prefrontal lobotomy.'”
She added, “All the teams did great. It was a matter of mastering the buzzer!”
Glen Gabbard, M.D., the Brown Foundation Professor of Psychoanalysis at Baylor College of Medicine and director of Baylor's psychiatry clinic, served as emcee.
MindGames was a collaboration between APA and the American College of Psychiatrists and supported by an unrestricted educational grant from AstraZeneca. ▪
