A public-academic partnership to train psychiatric residents in a rural mental health program

Psychiatric residency training programs in rural communities face many well-known obstacles, including lack of structure, professional isolation, and excessive demands on residents to provide clinical services. The author describes a psychiatric residency training program in rural North Carolina developed through the collaboration between a rural four-county area mental health program, a medical school department of psychiatry, and a state agency. Rather than focusing on the problems of rural practice, the residency program emphasizes clinical and administrative issues common to all practice settings, fosters an atmosphere in which all staff at the training site support the program's educational mission, and encourages residents to identify with professionals who perform successfully in rural settings.