A Survey of Geriatric Psychiatry Fellows and Program Directors: Specialty Choice, Program Choice, and Program Quality

This study explored factors influencing a physician's choice to pursue geriatric psychiatry fellowship training from fellow and program director perspectives to improve recruitment into this critical need specialty.

Questionnaires were sent to the 54 fellows and 79 fellowship program directors of programs accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) available through the American Association for Geriatric Psychiatry (AAGP) listserv. A 5-point Likert scale (strongly disagree, disagree, neutral-undecided, somewhat agree, strongly agree) was used to score and rank these questionnaires.

Thirty-three program directors (42%) on the AAGP listserv and 24 (44%) of all ACGME accredited fellows responded. The clinical quality of the faculty (Fellows 92%, Program Directors 92%) and the fellowship's national reputation (Fellows 75%, Program Directors 88%) were most highly ranked by both. Fellows ranked proximity to family (79%) high (2nd) in their program choice, while ranking workload, salary, and visa issues as low.

This study emphasizes that family and cultural/ethnographic considerations, along with the core values of a training program, remain highly valued by trainees, and should inform structural changes to incentivize training, and enhance the inherent quality of fellowship programs.