The Role of Regional Conferences in Research Resident Career Development: The California Psychiatry Research Resident Retreat.

OBJECTIVE: For psychiatry research resident career development, there is a recognized need for improved cross-institutional mentoring and networking opportunities. One method to address this need is via regional conferences, open to current and recently graduated research residents and their mentors. With this in mind, we developed the biennial California Psychiatry Research Resident Retreat (CPRRR) and collected feedback from participants to 1) Assess resident satisfaction, 2) Determine the utility of the retreat as a networking and mentorship tool, and 3) Identify areas for improvement.

METHODS: We gathered survey data from resident attendees at the two first CPRRRs. We analyzed the data to look for trends in satisfaction as well as areas that need improvement.

RESULTS: Thirty-two residents from five California training programs attended the CPRRR in 2013 while 33 attended from six programs in 2015. The residents were from all years of training, but concentrated in their second and third years. Approximately 41% and 49% of the attendees were female and 53% and 39% had an MD/PhD in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Twenty-four and 32 residents provided anonymous feedback in 2013 and 2015, respectively. Mean feedback scores were very high (> 4/5) for overall satisfaction, peer- and faculty-networking, the keynote speaker and the flash talks for both years. Mean feedback scores for the ethics debates and mentoring sessions were somewhat lower (≤ 4/5), however, both showed significant improvement from 2013 to 2015.

CONCLUSION: The CPRRRs appear to be an effective mechanism for providing psychiatry research residents with a meaningful cross-institutional opportunity for networking and mentorship. Feedback-driven changes to the CPRRRs improved participant satisfaction for several components of the conference. Future efforts will be aimed at broadening mentorship and networking opportunities, optimizing teaching approaches for research ethics, and considering different feedback-gathering approaches to allow for improved longitudinal follow-up and subgroup analysis.