Take a look at the number of Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine at UNLV graduates who stay in town for residency. Now look at those matriculating into residencies within the Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine. That’s where you will see what leadership considers a “positive trend” within one particular department.
Since the school began awarding medical degrees in 2021, the psychiatry department and behavioral health’s residency program have taken on more Kirk Kerkorian graduates (21) than any other graduate medical education (GME) program within the school. Family medicine (13) and internal medicine (12) have the next largest totals. While there have only been five graduating classes to date, the success warrants a closer look at what the department is doing right.
First, it should be noted that psychiatry as a specialty is becoming increasingly popular among medical students. According to the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC), applications to psychiatry residency programs were up modestly this year nationwide. But why do so many local grads choose this particular program?
Psychiatry and behavioral health chair Dr. Lisa Durette explains it this way: “I attribute our success in recruiting residents 100% to Dr. Mason Jahnke, our vice chair of education, who runs the clerkship, and to Shayna Davis, our administrative assistant, who helps coordinate the entire student experience.”
One of the components of the medical student experience in psychiatry is Jahnke’s commitment to collaborative learning. “It’s the belief that whether you’re a first-year med student or someone who’s been practicing 30 years, everyone has something of value to bring to the conversation,” Jahnke says. “We want to create an environment where everyone feels comfortable and everybody learns from each other. It’s not a competitive environment, it’s an environment where we all try to build each other up.”
During a psychiatry clerkship, medical students participate in roundtable discussions using what Durette calls the giant notebook. “We have this big, laminated notebook of different cases we go through to help engage students throughout the entire clerkship, and the results have been outstanding. If you compare the shelf exam scores from psychiatry to any other specialty, psychiatry shelf exam scores outpace everything else and have done so consistently. I think that’s all because of Mason’s amazing teaching,” Durette says.
“It sounds cheesy, but we’re trying to make learning fun,” says Jahnke. “We’re trying to be as engaging as possible, so they have a better chance of remembering it. So, instead of me just standing in front of a computer talking at them for a couple hours, in which the retention rate is pretty low, I split it into different activities. For instance, we’ll go around the circle and take turns reading the cases and then discuss as a group — why this diagnosis, what could it be confused with, that kind of thing. Because for most of the students who rotate with us, they’re not going into psychiatry, so it’s really important that there are some key concepts they remember for their future practice regardless of what specialty they go into.”
Psychiatry clerkships differ from many other specialties in that students travel to different locations to observe and learn. Durette calls the coordination it takes to make this happen a Herculean task that administrative assistant Davis executes exceptionally well. “Psychiatry residents and medical students are spread out all over the community,” Durette says. “They’re going to local private practices and psychiatric hospitals and state hospitals and University Medical Center [UMC], and Shayna has this very unwieldy task of trying to place people in the right places and to identify their interests. For example, if an incoming student has interests in child psych, she makes an effort to get them some additional experience and exposure to child psychiatry.” Durette calls Davis the “secret sauce” to their success.
“I imagine myself in their position,” says Davis, who previously worked in University Police Services as quartermaster and evidence manager. “I’d want to know exactly where I’m going, what time, and who I’m talking to. I make sure the schedule is as clear as possible. I want them to know how badging works before they show up and who they’re supposed to be seeing. So, I try my very best to make sure they have the information in front of them.” According to Jahnke, they consistently get good feedback on organization and communication.
So, why does retaining Kirk Kerkorian School of Medicine graduates even matter? Years of AAMC data indicate those who attend medical school and complete their residency in the same city, stay to practice in that city at a significantly higher rate. On top of that, Durette and Jahnke argue that, particularly in psychiatry, homegrown physicians are better for the community. “I absolutely think so,” Durette says. “It helps that they’re coming to us with a great knowledge base of the local area and the current systems of care.”
In fact, school of medicine graduates are helping build out the psychiatry infrastructure in town. “Look at any of the current psychiatric practices around town and you’ll see our graduates there,” saysDurette. “Go to any of the psychiatric hospitals in town, and our graduates are there, and sometimes in leadership roles. It’s like building your own internal network of psychiatrists throughout the valley.”
Las Vegas growing its own psychiatrists is beginning to pay off in tangible ways, too. Thanks in part to UNLV’s child psychiatry fellowship recruiting and retaining 91% of its graduates, for the first time in more than two decades, the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry’s workforce map shows Clark County as having an adequate supply of child and adolescent psychiatrists. It may seem like a small victory, but to a region playing catch-up in the effort to recruit all types of physicians, even small victories are celebrated.
