The Psychiatry Institute for Medical Students: a decade of success.

Recruiting medical students into psychiatric residency programs has received much attention. In the 1980s and 1990s, North American psychiatric residency programs experienced numerous barriers to recruiting highquality medical students (1–5). This remains a problem around the world. The literature suggests that experiences during medical school, personalities of applicants, and beliefs about the practice of psychiatryare all strongly associated with the decision to enter a psychiatric residency. Recruitment strategies have been widely recommended to bolster positive psychiatry-related experiences and to alter negative perceptions (6–9). In the mid-1990s, only about 4% of U.S. and 6% of Canadian medical school graduates chose psychiatry(10, 11). More recent studies focused on perceptions and attitudes of medical students about psychiatrycareers (12– 17). While initial interest is still the most influential factor, positive experiences during psychiatryclerkships and electives have been described as “modifiable programmatic factors that could enhance recruitment to psychiatry” (17). The PsychiatryInstitute for Medical Students at the University of Toronto in Ontario was initiated in 1994 as a novel recruitment strategy (18). To our knowledge, similar programs have not been reported. As an indication of how much the recruitment situation has changed in Toronto, the 2008 Canadian Resident Matching Service match was successful in filling all 28 postgraduate year 1 (PGY-1) psychiatric residency positions at the University of Toronto as well as two international medical graduate positions—a total of 30 spots, up from 24 spots 2 years ago (19). As of July 2007, the University of Toronto has 138 psychiatric residents from PGY-1 to PGY-5.