Resident Wellness

Wellness of our residents is of utmost importance in the UMass Chan Medical School Psychiatry Residency. We strive to train psychiatrists to deftly navigate their personal needs as well as the needs of their community, family, and career.  Regardless, residency is ultimately a challenging time. We as a program have developed numerous resources for our residents to utilize as they learn to navigate their journey towards becoming resilient and gratified attending physician psychiatrists.

Comradery

Intern residents are paired with upper-level resident mentors before they begin in the program to ease the transition from medical school. Resident mentors are also utilized when they transition to the outpatient psychiatry world in the PGY3 year. There are several resident committees focused on wellness outside of work, including social events, retreat planning, and special interest groups. Our residents enjoy their resident workroom within the department- a space that is just for residents to work and commune, which fosters inter-year comradery.

Mentorship

In addition, the program directors meet with each resident individually frequently throughout the year to focus on mentorship needs, career goals, and life goals. As a result of these meetings, residents are introduced to experts in their field of interest within our vast faculty, and are promoted for national awards, projects, conferences and workgroups to further their career goals.  Our program values education and scholarly activity highly, and we have devoted a full day to didactics each week to focus on these values as a program together.

Personal Wellness

UMASS GME has numerous resources for our residents to utilize to help foster personal wellness as well as academic and clinical excellence. Our program and Graduate Medical Education(GME) at UMASS strongly supports residents in obtaining their own mental health care and provide resources to do so. GME free, confidential counseling, coaching and medication management to all residents and fellows, in a convenient virtual format. The Sherman Center Fitness and Athletic Center is on campus and readily accessible to all residents. In addition, there are opportunities for child care assistance for residents who are also parents.

Please see the GME wellness and benefits website for more specific details on the above topics.