Psychiatry Residents' Use of Educational Websites: A Pilot Survey Study

Psychiatry residents have numerous online educational resources readily available to them although currently there are no data regarding residents' use and perception of such websites.

A survey was offered to 62 residents from all four years of training as well as recent graduates of a single psychiatry residency training program.

Residents reported utilizing online resources on average 68 % of the time, in comparison to 32 % on average for printed materials. Residents reported UpToDate, PubMed, and Wikipedia as the most visited websites and ranked each highly but for different purposes. Thirty-five percent of residents felt that insufficient faculty guidance was a barrier to use of these educational websites.

Pilot data indicate psychiatry residents use online resources daily for their education in various settings. Resident perceptions of individual website's trustworthiness, ease of use, and sources of clinical decision-making and personal learning suggest potential opportunities for educators to better understand the current use of these resources in residency training. Reported barriers including lack of faculty guidance suggest opportunities for academic psychiatry. Further study is necessary at multiple sites before such results may be generalized.