Correlates of psychiatry grand rounds attendance

Although grand rounds is an important educational conference in most medical schools and psychiatry departments, there have been few studies of which variables influence faculty and trainee attendance. The authors hypothesized that psychiatry grand rounds attendance would be affected by content area, the speaker's discipline and geographic origin, and the label of "research" in the presentation title. In 3 years of grand rounds presentations at the Baylor College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences, fewer residents attended grand rounds when "research" was in the label and attendance was greater when the rounds were cosponsored by another agency, presented in honor of someone, or given by an out-of-town speaker.