Professional Development in Psychiatric Residents

Abstract

FOSTERING professional development of psychiatric residents requires individualizing them in terms of their endowment, past education, professional goals, and progress and rate of achievement. In addition to the general curriculum provided, the teachers have the responsibility to know each resident's specific needs, and to provide appropriate advice and experiences in order to maximize each one's professional development. It is essential, then, to have a systematic concept of professional development, a framework for delineation of the causes of variation in the component functions, and a method for assessing the quality and degree of acquired function. We recognize that the residency is but one phase in the professional development of a psychiatrist; what occurs in the residency is in part a function of what the resident brings to it in the nature of past experience, and his professional identity may not be fully consolidated until some years after the completion of his