Part of psychiatry's recruitment problem stems from large-scale
defections among students who were planning careers in psychiatry when they
entered medical school. The authors present data indicating that University
of Maryland freshmen who preferred psychiatry were more than four times as
likely to enter psychiatric residency training if they participated in the
Combined Accelerated Program in Psychiatry, a continuous 4-year medical
school track, than if they pursued the regular undergraduate psychiatry
program. The authors believe that an enthusiastic psychiatric faculty
intimately involved with students over an extended period of time was the
crucial factor neutralizing antipsychiatric socialization experiences in
medical school.Abstract Teaser