Upon completion of their training, our graduates are highly valued and perform extraordinarily well. Our residents find that their training allows them to be highly successful clinicians and academic psychiatrists.
Opportunities after residency
Graduates of our program are recognized as superbly trained clinicians, educators, and critical thinkers. Private practitioners and recruiters call us frequently to inquire about the availability of our senior residents regarding job offers.
Our graduates go on to pursue a variety of careers in patient care, research, and education in both the private and public sectors as well as academia. While some residents stay in St. Louis, others choose to relocate. We support our graduates and help connect them with alumni across the country.
Breakdown of graduate career choices immediately following graduation over the past 10 years:
| Post-Graduate Plans | Percentage |
|---|---|
| Clinical Practice | 34% |
| Clinical Fellowship | 35% |
| Academics | 25% |
| Research Fellowship | 6% |
Clinical practice
About 34% of our graduates immediately enter into a full-time clinical setting involving private practice, public psychiatry, or a mixture.
Clinical fellowship / subspecialty training
Most of our residents do not complete fellowship training because they can obtain extensive subspecialty training here during their PGY4 research and elective time. Those who do opt to pursue additional training, about 35%, will do it either in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry or Forensic Psychiatry.
Washington University psychiatry residents who know they want to specialize in child and adolescent psychiatry will typically transfer to our fellowship program for PGY4.
Academics
Many residents, about 25%, join a medical school faculty. In this role, some emphasize clinical care while others become involved in medical school or residency education and administration. A role as a member of a clinical research team is also possible. This can be accomplished through a combined research fellowship and instructorship position where about 80% time is devoted to research training and about 20% time is dedicated to clinical and teaching responsibilities.
Research training
Other graduates, about 6%, decide they want a career emphasis in clinical or basic research but initially they spend several years after residency learning research methodology in a research fellowship without having a faculty position where they also responsible for seeing patients and teaching.