Factors Effecting the Recruitment of Residents: The Residents’ and Residency Directors’ View *

A survey of the opinions of Canadian psychiatric residents (N = 199) and their residency directors (N = 13) was conducted regarding six hypothesized reasons for the decline in psychiatric career choice by medical students. The residents felt that the adverse effects of undergraduate education and the negative socialization experience in medical school were particularly important. Of less importance was the competition from family practice programs and medical school admission policies that pre-screened biosocial students out. Little importance was attached to the relatively low financial benefits of this specialty and to new immigration laws. The experience of negative socialization was found to be significantly more important to Canadian medical school graduates than foreign graduates. The residency directors placed less emphasis on the importance of undergraduate education than did the residents.