Subspecialty Selection and Fellowship Training Satisfaction among American and Canadian Geriatric Psychiatry Fellows

Abstract

The Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship Subspecialty survey aimed to identify key motivating factors associated with choosing geriatric psychiatry as a career, and to assess train-ing satisfaction among geriatric psychiatry fellows/residents in Canada and the United States. American and Canadian geriatric psychiatry program directors were asked to distribute an online survey to their fellows. Descriptive statistics for quantitative items and Mann-Whitney U tests were performed to assess for differences by country of training. Thirty-one geriatric psychiatry fellows completed the survey. The most important motivating factors for pursuing a career in geriat-ric psychiatry were found to be “working with patients and families”, “working in an interdisciplinary environment”, and “intellectual stimulation”. Fellows’ overall training satisfac-tion was high, with American fellows more satisfied than Canadian residents (p = .047) on average, especially with regard to biomedical aspects of training (p = .01).