One of the main goals of the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV and its graduate medical education (GME) programs is creating doctors that stay in Nevada and care for its people. Already, the school of medicine is starting to see this goal come to fruition with doctors like Dr. Caitlin Chen – assistant professor and associate residency program director in the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health – being a perfect example.

Originally from Tempe, Arizona, Chen first joined the school of medicine as a resident in the psychiatry residency program after earning her Doctor of Osteopathic Medicine from Touro University Nevada. After residency, Chen left the state to complete a fellowship in forensic psychiatry at Oregon Health and Science University. After her fellowship, she had to decide where she wanted to practice.

For Chen, going back to Las Vegas was one of the first things that came to her mind. The city was not far from Arizona, where her parents currently live, and she made friendships and connections in the city that she wanted to keep. Also influencing her decision to come back to Las Vegas were her positive experiences in the school of medicine’s psychiatry residency program.

Chen cites many reasons she liked the residency program, such as the exposure to a “variety and breadth of different patient types with different pathology”; the stress put on residents being reasonable and allowing her to learn everything necessary to be a good psychiatrist; and the assistance and encouragement from faculty members who really just wanted to help her succeed and become the doctor she wanted to be.

“ … There were faculty members, as I went through my residency, that left lasting marks on me and really helped me develop and figure out what kind of psychiatrist I wanted to be when I finished … I had interest in going into forensic psychiatry, and the program was really supportive of that,” Chen states. “I was able to have enough time and flexibility in order to learn more about forensic psychiatry and make sure that was really what I wanted to do before I ended up going to fellowship.”

This preparation, training, and support she received paid off as Chen received glowing remarks during her fellowship interviews and from her fellowship director.

“ … My fellowship director would often make comments like, ‘I can tell that you've done competency evaluations before as a resident,’ or even when I interviewed for fellowship programs, I would get comments like, ‘You have a lot more forensic exposure than we would expect for a resident,’” Chen says. “I think that was really like a credit to our residency program that residents can be supported to pursue their interests.”

With all these things in mind, Chen ended up returning to Las Vegas and to the school of medicine. “I felt like I had such a wonderful training experience here that I wanted to return and try and help ensure that future trainees would have an equally wonderful experience, so I was thrilled to be hired as faculty and to be able to return,” she says.

Currently, Chen’s clinical work involves seeing and treating patients at Stein Hospital, UNLV Health Mojave Counseling, and University Medical Center (UMC). Academically, she is able to train the residents in the school of medicine’s psychiatry residency program and help them with anything they need – similar to how there were faculty members ready to help her when she was a trainee.

“I feel like it’s a good position to be in as someone who is a former trainee because I understand how the program works,” Chen states. “ … I knew of certain lectures that went over really well with the residents or lecturers that the residents really enjoyed hearing from, so I'm able to make sure that those things get incorporated into their didactic sessions going forward.”

When it comes to the state’s investment in graduate medical education (GME) programs, Chen says, “Particularly within psychiatry, there is a shortage of psychiatrists in the state of Nevada. I think it's important that the state invests in residency programs like our residency program, so that way we can not only recruit people like me (I'm not from Nevada originally, but yet here I am), [but] also retain the people that we train here.”