Marshall University Rural Psychiatry Residency Program

Description

In 2015, Marshall University created its first Psychiatry Residency Program to address the shortage of psychiatrists in West Virginia. The program is based in Huntington, one of the largest cities in the state — and, as trainees tend to stay in the area where they were trained, the program has been successful in building a large psychiatry department that has been able to develop and provide new psychiatric programs for Huntington and the surrounding area. However, the need for psychiatrists in the more rural areas of the state has persisted: most counties in West Virginia do not have a single psychiatrist.

To provide residents with the opportunity to train — and, ideally, remain — in a rural setting, the Marshall University Consortium has created a new Rural Psychiatry Residency Program, in which residents split their time between Huntington and the small town of Point Pleasant, about 40 miles away. The program also serves the dual purpose of bringing needed psychiatric care to an underserved region: There are currently no practicing psychiatrists in Mason County, where Point Pleasant is located, or any surrounding counties, meaning that people who live there must drive an hour or more to receive care.

The program is currently accredited to accept four residents per year.

Services offered

Residents will spend the first year of their residency completing rotations in family medicine, emergency medicine and neurology at Rivers Health, a regional hospital in Point Pleasant. Psychiatric inpatient rotations occur at Mildred Mitchell-Bateman Hospital, a state-supported psychiatric hospital, and at St. Mary's Medical Centerin Huntington. At any given time, half of the interns will be working in Point Pleasant, while the other half are in Huntington. During the second year of residency, residents are in Huntington full-time, taking advantage of experiences including inpatient psychiatry, consultation psychiatry and specialty services such as geriatrics, child and adolescent psychiatry and transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS).

In the third and fourth years of their residency, the residents will be primarily based in Point Pleasant, working at a new outpatient psychiatric clinic that Marshall University has provided. The clinic will be housed in a university-owned building in Point Pleasant that is currently undergoing renovations. Third-year students will dedicate their time solely to working at the outpatient clinic in Point Pleasant; fourth-year students will spend a majority of their time at the outpatient clinic, with some elective time built in.

Results

The program welcomed its first class of residents in July of 2024, and the residents have begun their internships at Rivers Health and in Huntington. Point Pleasant community members and local medical providers have expressed excitement about the program and the future outpatient clinic, program leaders say.

Challenges

While the original Psychiatry Residency Program provided a strong foundation for the Rural Psychiatry Residency Program, program leaders had to largely start from scratch when designing the rotations in Point Pleasant, as Rivers Health had not previously hosted any residents. This process was challenging, but was made easier by the strong relationships program leaders developed with local physicians and community members through conversations, meetings, and attending community events.

Replication

For universities interested in creating a similar rural residency program, Marshall's program leaders recommend choosing a rural site that is within reasonable commuting distance from a larger town or city, as housing and transportation may be tricky for residents in more isolated rural areas. Proximity to a larger town or city also allows residents to experience a broader range of rotations and to more easily meet all of the Graduate Medical Education (GME) requirements; a smaller and more isolated rural community may not be able to provide as many training opportunities.

Contact Information

Suzanne Holroyd, MD, Program Director, Rural Psychiatry Residency
Marshall University
Rural Psychiatry Residency Program
holroyds@marshall.edu