Developing the careers of clinician-educators in psychiatry.

Objective: This article describes initial efforts by the newly developed Clinician-Educator Section (CES) of the Association for Academic Psychiatry (AAP) to support the career advancement of academic faculty within psychiatry. The CES provided its first workshop at the 2005 AAP annual meeting, focusing on early career development and academic promotion.

Method: The CES obtained input from members regarding their vision for how this newly developed section could support their career development. Workshops were among the suggestions provided and therefore this article will describe the planning, implementation, and outcome measures of the initial workshop provided by the CES.

Results: The authors describe a summary of the workshop, descriptive statistics obtained from a needs assessment, and formal evaluation ratings of the workshop. Results indicate that this initial effort was a helpful professional development opportunity for academic psychiatrists.

Conclusions: The AAP-led initiative described in this article is a positive first step in the field of academic psychiatry to leverage the valuable educational and facilitative role of a professional organization in promoting the career advancement of clinician-educators in psychiatry.