Attitudes of psychiatric residents toward the necessity of internship

The authors note that the elimination of the internship requirement for board certification has engendered much discussion and has called attention to the need for further study of training in psychiatry. To help clarify the issue, they investigated demographic and career choice factors, individual internship decisions, and perceptions and feelings about these decisions in 57 psychiatric residents. The results indicate that the career plans of students have a strong influence on their training choices--those who are oriented toward inpatient psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine view the internship as more relevant than those who plan to concentrate in other areas. The authors suggest further research on the relation between career choice and training preferences.