The Quality of Psychiatric Residency - The assessment of programs and options for distributing psychiatric residents in the service of health care reform

Recent health care reform initiatives proposed training fewer medical speci alists, including psychiatrists, and determining the size and location of t raining programs via centralized regulatory mechanisms. Facing such potenti al future developments, the American Association of Directors of Psychiatri c Residency Training appointed a Task Force on the Quality of Residency Pro grams to develop informed recommendations for the field. This paper describ es the Task Force's considerations and recommendations concerning how the l east damaging and most effective decisions could be made regarding the dist ribution of residency positions, program size, and the future funding of tr aining stipends. The recommendations emphasize voluntary decisions, feedbac k from local and regional stakeholders regarding perceived needs and demand s for psychiatrists, and Federal or regional funding of post graduate train ing stipends that are not primarily tied to providing clinical services.