PSYCHIATRISTS IN-THE-MAKING

skills by enrolling in a course at a psychoanalytic institute after I graduate. As soon as I finish writing my therapy notes, I head back to the inpatient unit where I spend the next couple of hours with residents and students, either discussing their patients or reviewing charts. In addition to teaching and acting as a liaison for the treatment teams, I occasionally help with direct patient care as well. Once a month—usually on a Monday afternoon—I meet with my mentor, Dr. Paul Appelbaum, for about 1 hour. Dr. Appelbaum has been supervising me regularly since last year despite his very busy schedule. I look forward to these meetings that help me retreat back and focus on my goals. After a busy day, I sit with him to review my academic and clinical work in the past month. We talk about, among other things, my career plans and work on an article that we coauthor. I believe apprenticeship still plays a major role in medicine, and it is more so in psychiatry. Wellmatched mentors can be primary role models for trainees and mold their professional identity. My work for the day does not end when I go home. After supper, as my daughter sits for homework, I start working on my assignments or projects. Grateful for having the privilege of being a resident in psychiatry, I spend the last few hours of the day to prepare for a new day with new challenges.

Mentor: Paul Appelbaum, M.D.

D

r. Rasim Arikan is balancing the need to have a broad training experience with the pursuit of his interests in the subspecialty area of law and psychiatry. My view is that it is 384

very valuable for residents who are headed for academic careers to get a firm toehold in their area of particular interest during their residency years. This can include structured reading, participation in ongoing research, development of original research, and production of review articles in collaboration with a faculty member. Of course, none of this can preempt a thorough clinical training experience. Hence in Rasim’s typical day, he spends time in the outpatient clinic with his longer-term patients, many of whom require medications as well as psychotherapy. Moreover, as the chief resident on the inpatient unit, he is intimately involved with inpatient care on a daily basis and receives supervision from the unit’s medical director. Teaching, as Rasim’s account suggests, is both a skill to be developed and a way of encouraging one’s own learning. He supervises medical students and residents on the inpatient unit, and has taken the initiative to develop the twice-weekly teaching sessions to which he refers, each focused on a particular topic of interest. I believe firmly that residents who learn how to teach during training will be better teachers when they join the faculty. Hence, we try to maximize our residents’ teaching opportunities and hold a yearly teaching retreat for the residents, where we address the skills they need to become excellent teachers. Rasim took the initiative to approach me about working with him on a project related to law and psychiatry and sought general advice about his career as well. He seemed almost surprised to find himself interested in legal issues in psychiatry, since his Ph.D. work was in biophysics. But he decided to follow his in-

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tellectual interests wherever they led. It takes some gumption for a resident to approach a busy department chair seeking this kind of mentorship—but it is the residents who display this self-confidence and focused interest who are worth investing in. So Rasim and I have been working on a paper describing a proposed civil commitment statute in Turkey, where he was born, and expect that we will soon have a manuscript ready for submission. How determined is Rasim to develop an academic career in law and psychiatry? Determined enough that when an opportunity arose for him to work on a second project in the area about which none of our faculty have particular expertise, he sought out a mentor at another program in our region to help with that project. This is the kind of effort on which academic careers are built. Next year, Rasim will join our fellowship program in forensic psychiatry, the next step on his career path. He has already been selected as a Rappeport Fellow of the American Academy of Psychiatry and the Law. I look forward to the day when I welcome him as a colleague in our field. Drs. Arikan and Appelbaum are affiliated with the Department of Psychiatry, University of Massachusetts Medical School, Worcester, MA.

Psychiatrist-in-the-Making: Elizabeth Bromley, M.D.

I

am in my fourth year of a psychiatry residency at Columbia University and the New York State Psychiatric Institute. In my last year of training, I am consolidating the skills I’ve practiced through residency and medical school. I have more clinical confidence, but also more apprehen-

Academic Psychiatry, 29:4, September-October 2005