Early Career Physician Update

SEE YOU NEXT ISSUE!

I’m thrilled to be serving as ECP Representative for the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society this year! Upon graduating from the UCLA adult psychiatry residency program in 2017, I moved to the Philadelphia suburbs, and have worked in a number of outpatient settings, including a large health system, community mental health, (pre-pandemic) telemedicine, and solo private practice. Because of those experiences, I have become interested in fostering community and communications between psychiatrists, so we can support each other in shared challenges in psychiatric practice and work together on addressing the issues that we identify. An important step towards this would be creating avenues for members to communicate with one another. At present, the national APA has listservs for members with shared interests to communicate via email. I believe it would be helpful to create a state-wide listserv so we can discuss Pennsylvania-related issues with one another – to provide support to one another and take action together. Social media, which many of us early career psychiatrists turn to for communication, has some utility in this capacity, but I believe our state society has the potential to be more effective in galvanizing meaningful change when there are issues that warrant sustained and organized attention. As early career psychiatrists are establishing and developing their careers, I also believe it would be helpful to develop programs to specifically address their unique needs. Such programs could include:

• Career panels featuring psychiatrists practicing in a variety of settings, and could feature a job fair with local employers, • Private practice workshops or toolkits focused on state-specific parameters such as questions on licensing or reimbursement, and • Mentoring programs—I’ve been involved with the

APA Psychotherapy Caucus’ mentoring workgroup in creating a series of virtual round tables to facilitate connections between potential mentors and mentees to support those seeking to integrate psychotherapy in their practices. A similar model might be used to develop mentoring relationships within Pennsylvania.

If any of you are interested in any of these program ideas, or have one to suggest, please contact me or your ECP chapter representative to see what we can get done together. Please reach out to me with ideas, concerns, or suggestions you have regarding how the Pennsylvania Psychiatric Society can better support early career psychiatrists and our patients.