Hales Joins APA Staff to Address Education, Career Development
Deborah J. Hales, M.D.: “Two critical education-related issues for APA are recruitment and workforce in psychiatry.”
Hales, a pediatrician, psychiatrist, and former residency training director, will also serve as associate director of APA’s Division of Education, Minority, and National Programs.
“I am honored to serve as director of APA’s Department of Education and Career Development,” Hales told Psychiatric News.
Most recently, Hales served as director of the psychiatry residency training program at San Mateo County Mental Health Services, where she chaired the continuing medical education program for more than 10 years.
Hales was also a clinical instructor in the department of psychiatry and behavioral sciences at Stanford University Medical Center and maintained a private practice of psychiatry in Palo Alto, Calif.
Hales did not foresee a career in psychiatry when she began her professional journey as a board-certified pediatrician. In 1982 Hales was medical director of the Young Adult Clinic at Columbia Presbyterian Medical Center in New York City. Finding that she was interested in the psychological dimensions of the youngsters’ problems, Hales eventually made the transition to psychiatry. She completed her residency in psychiatry at Stanford University in 1988.
Hales is no stranger to APA and its educational mission. In 1995 she was appointed to APA’s Council on Medical Education and Career Development, and until joining the APA staff, she chaired APA’s Committee on Graduate Medical Education. In addition, she served as the cochair and then chair of the Membership Committee of the American Association of Directors of Psychiatric Residency Training Programs (AADPRT). Hales was recently appointed associate editor of the American College of Psychiatrists’ Psychiatric Residents’ In-Training Examination (PRITE).
“Being involved in these organizations and knowing their members will help me to facilitate communications from this central point at APA,” said Hales, who plans to serve as a liaison between APA and those organizations with which she has been an active member. She also plans to continue already active liaisons with the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) and the Association of Directors of Medical Student Education in Psychiatry (ADMSEP).
“We have a great deal to learn from one another,” she told Psychiatric News.
“Now, two critical education-related issues for APA are recruitment and workforce in psychiatry,” said Hales, who recently attended a retreat for the Council on Medical Education and Career Development in Washington, D.C. (Original article: see articles on pages 27 and Original article: 28). One of the outcomes of the retreat is a plan to develop and implement a strategy to address issues of workforce and recruitment in psychiatry.
According to Hales, the plan will address workforce issues in the broadest sense—from what U.S. medical students learn about psychiatry and what influences their choice of psychiatry as a career to the recruitment of international medical graduates (IMGs) entering psychiatry.
The other major issue, according to Hales, is the core competencies for residents endorsed by the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) in 1999.
“There will be a national dialogue about what competency is and how we as psychiatric educators will measure competency. APA will be a big part of that dialogue.”
ACGME’s Residency Review Committees will be incorporating these general competencies in the special requirements over the next five years: patient care, medical knowledge, practice-based learning and improvement, interpersonal and communication skills, professionalism, and systems-based practice. In addition, Hales will give attention to the psychotherapy competencies, which took effect for all psychiatry residency programs on January 1.
“As psychiatric educators,” said Hales, “we are interested in focusing on the core competencies and will work to develop measures of competency in psychotherapy. I look forward to working with the allied educational organizations in this effort, including APA’s Task Force on Core Competencies.”
Psychotherapy competencies established within psychiatry include brief therapy, cognitive-behavioral therapy, combined psychotherapy and psychopharmacology, psychodynamic therapy, and supportive therapy.
“Medicine is answering the public’s concerns and regaining public trust in medicine as a profession,” said Hales.
It is in this spirit of communication that Hales announced plans for a newsletter on psychiatric education, which APA will disseminate to educators and educational organizations. “Not only will APA feature information about its own educational component,” said Hales, “but also it will feature updates on educational projects of organizations such as AAMC, AADPRT, ADMSEP, and the subspecialty organizations.”
Hales also plans to launch the Educational Research Network (ERN). “Initially,” said Hales, “we plan to track information about workforce and recruitment in psychiatry. We’d like to gather data about medical students’ attitudes about their clerkships in psychiatry, for instance.”
Hales would also like to gather workforce data on psychiatrists who are women, minorities, and IMGs. “IMGs currently make up almost half of our psychiatry residents,” said Hales. “It is crucial that we pay attention to the recruitment and retention of the best IMGs into our residency programs.” Hales added that APA and educators in psychiatry should remain committed to the recruitment and retention of U.S. medical graduates as well.
The database would be made available to researchers and educators to use as a resource when conducting demographic research in psychiatric education.
For Hales, other challenges lie ahead as well. “As an educator, I’d like to integrate and unify interest in the cutting-edge neuroscience research without forgetting that what makes most people want to become psychiatrists is more humanistic,” said Hales.
“APA’s educational constituency will benefit from our ability to take the lead on new projects in education, but for the members who are not educators, through the division’s Office of CME, we will promote high-quality continuing medical education and related products available at a reasonable cost to our members,” commented Hales.
Hales, who also oversees the Office of Career Development and Women’s Programs, heartily endorses projects overseen by Tara McLoughlin, director of that office. “The Women’s Mentoring Network and the Women’s Aventis Travel Scholarship are of great benefit to APA members,” remarked Hales, who plans to work closely with McLoughlin to continue developing more career-development programs for women psychiatrists, early career psychiatrists, and other psychiatrist groups. “I am particularly interested in women’s leadership and recruitment of women into research and academic careers,” said Hales. ▪
