Program for Chief Residents Prepares Them to Take Charge
Abstract
Through group exercises and immersive learning, chief residents learn how to become more effective leaders.
An immersive leadership seminar has been inspiring generations of incoming chief psychiatry residents to lead their colleagues more effectively by spending a weekend looking within.
Bruce Schwartz, M.D., program director of the Chief Resident Leadership Conference, says that many of the chief residents who come to the conference are dealing with conflicted feelings about authority and leadership, which they resolve over the course of the weekend-long seminar.
The Chief Resident Leadership Conference (CRLC) has received glowing endorsements from thousands of attendees since its founding in 1972 (Psychiatric News, February 3, 2012), according to Bruce Schwartz, M.D., the CRLC program director and deputy chair and professor in the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Albert Einstein College of Medicine.
The most recent seminar took place this past summer in Armonk, N.Y., marking the 45th anniversary of the leadership seminar.
“By sending chief residents to the leadership seminar,” Schwartz told Psychiatric News, “psychiatry departments are making an investment in the future leadership of our profession.”
Typically, Schwartz explained, the seminar begins with CRLC participants discussing any ambivalence or conflict they may feel about the transition into management roles, their perception of authority, and the responsibility associated with the role of chief resident.
Schwartz, who attended the first CRLC as a chief resident in 1978 (then known as the Tarrytown Leadership Conference, due to the conference location), described it as an “unforgettable, life-changing experience” and has been involved first as a faculty member and for the past decade as program director. At this year’s seminar, there were about 15 faculty members leading small-group seminars with chief residents from 41 programs in the United States and Canada.
Schwartz explained that while most seminars designed to instill leadership skills are didactic and facilitate passive learning using lectures, the CRLC enhances self-awareness and emotional intelligence in chief residents through intensive group exercises in which residents practice conflict resolution, team building, and managing new and unexpected situations.
“We have consistently received overwhelmingly positive feedback from the residents who have attended the CRLC. Furthermore, many of the chief residents who attended in the past have since become leaders in the profession,” Schwartz said.
Stephen Mondia, M.D., a chief resident in the psychiatric emergency department at Montefiore Medical Center, told Psychiatric News that the conference “really pushed me to be more self-aware about my personal qualities and how they play into the way I relate to others.”
Mondia added that during the CRLC, he learned that “self-reflection is the name of the game—the conference taught me that the more I understand my strengths and, more importantly, my weaknesses, the more effective I can be when assuming a leadership role.” ■
More information about the CRLC can be accessed here.
