Current curricular trends after the COVID-19 pandemic: A national survey of psychiatry residency programs

Abstract

Objectives With the COVID-19 pandemic, psychiatry residencies (academic, community, and hybrid) have adopted different learning modalities to preserve a high quality of educational training. There is minimal data on specific program adaptations, related change perspectives, and program type stratification. This study aims to analyze trends in curriculum changes in accredited psychiatry residency programs in the United States. Methods Program directors of accredited general psychiatry programs in the United States were surveyed to assess both general program details and changes in educational content, delivery, and perspectives of their respective program curricula. Data was analyzed with SPSS with 0.05 significance level. Results A total of 63 program directors of 264 eligible programs were included (23.9%). We observed a dramatic shift to integrate virtual learning post-pandemic (98.5%) compared to pre-pandemic (3%). However, there was no association between these modality changes and program type [ P = 0.1343]. Furthermore, changes were noted in respect to didactic content (60%), decreased rotation sites (38%), and increased telemedicine exposure (84%) with no change of wellness days (67%) or protected time (97%) and above changes had no association with program type. Interestingly, we found the use of virtual educational platforms was described as positive (59.7%) with 9 programs noting a future transition to a hybrid learning model for didactics and grand rounds. Conclusions The findings suggest that pandemic-related curriculum adaptations infiltrated all different types of psychiatry residencies and suggest a national trend to continue virtual platform integration into psychiatry didactics. However, future investigation of virtual learning outcomes are warranted.