Scholarship and Training Committee Meeting May 17, 2009 San Francisco

Attendees:

Jules Ranz

Sarah Altman

David Pollack

David Cutler

Stephanie Lemelle

Tony Carino

(1) Certification

The agenda was set for this meeting including certification and survey form for fellowship directors. Updates on certification were reviewed: Mr. Steve Harrington, Executive Director of the National Association of Peer Specialists, has agreed to join the core work group. He has an interest in recovery and was identified through Ken Thompson and Paul Delvecchio.  Literature sources have been updated. The group gave feedback that Breakey’s Integrated Mental Health Services is best reference if one accessible textbook is to be chosen. Topic experts have been emailed and have been responding with disclosure forms.

The pathways to certification were simplified by setting a set number of points to be reached to obtain certification. Experience(Clinical, administrative, teaching or research in public psych) + Exam Score + Education would be added to determine score.  This would allow for early career psychiatrists who have high knowledge base as well as individuals who have served in the public sector for years to be able to obtain certification. Exam format was discussed and group gave feedback that an online exam (versus prometric standardized test center format) serves our purposes best as it is accessible, less costly to applicants and minimizes the need to work through a third party test center.  The cost of taking the exam should be cheaper for AACP members and cheap enough to not be prohibitive.

Stephanie, David, Julie and David agreed to reach out to specific topic experts to elicit their involvement.

Next action steps for meeting include obtaining confirmation from topic experts, reviewing topic experts and disclosures, send out examples of questions and desired format for questions, and initiate question formations for validation.

(2) Developing Network of Public/Community Psychiatry Fellowships

Julie convened the first meeting of approximately 30 directors and representatives of existing and planned Public/Community Psychiatry Fellowships and other interested parties at IPS last October. Participants represented approximately 10 programs. The second meeting is planned for this coming IPS. During the first meeting, a survey form was developed and distributed to all programs. The results were compiled by Julie and sent back to all participants at the meeting. Since then a listserv has been created. The survey form was reviewed by the Training Committee, and updated, for distribution prior to next Fall’s IPS meeting.