For the first time, a group of trainees have been mentored as they took on the task of creating a presentation for today’s poster exhibition.

The pilot program has been run jointly by the Academy’s Education Committee and the Oral Papers & Posters Sub-Committee.

Five posters in the exhibition are being presented by trainees from the mentorship program.

Co-chair of the Oral Papers & Posters Sub-Committee, Janna Gordon-Elliott, MD, FACLP, says: “The Academy has significant potential to contribute to the recruitment and development of trainees in Psychiatry. One pathway for doing so is by enhancing trainees’ successful presentation of posters at its annual meeting.”

The pilot has provided mentoring to trainees already committed to presenting a poster at CLP 2019. Through the pilot, organizers hope to “begin to identify barriers to trainees’ successful abstract submission and acceptance, and poster presentation, with the longer-term goal of identifying and actualizing systematic approaches to reducing these barriers.”

Narrative feedback has been collected as part of the program from trainee participants, mentors, and the work-group organizing the program, with the dual purpose of assessing the feasibility and acceptability of the program, and further clarifying the needs of trainees and mentors.

The program itself will also be presented as one poster in the exhibition—describing its development, format, and implementation. In the program poster, authors will present a summary of the narrative feedback, and basic descriptive data to characterize participants, effort, and product. 

“Information gathered during this pilot year will help with redesigning and expanding the program in future years to enhance its effectiveness and sustainability,” says Dr. Gordon-Elliott. “Short- and long-term outcomes of this program may include increased trainee engagement in C-L Psychiatry and ACLP; enhanced scholarly success of those participating in the program; and enrichment of the academic content that is both submitted to, and disseminated at, our annual meetings.”

A random selection of the posters, with comments on each from Dr. Gordon-Elliott, were in ACLP News, September and October issues, here.