Annual Publication 2025 FINAL 05292025 accessible - Flipbook - Page 57
someone who’s been practicing 30 years, everyone has something
of value to bring to the conversation,” Dr. 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.”
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 Dr. Jahnke, they consistently get good feedback on
organization and communication.
During a psychiatry clerkship, medical students participate in
roundtable discussions using what Dr. 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 … and I think that’s all because of
Mason’s amazing teaching,” Dr. Durette says.
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 signi昀椀cantly higher rate. On
top of that, Drs. Durette and Jahnke argue that, particularly in
psychiatry, homegrown physicians are better for the community.
“I absolutely think so,” Dr. 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.”
“It sounds cheesy, but we’re trying to make learning fun,” says Dr.
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.”
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,” says Dr. Durette. “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.”
Psychiatry clerkships differ from many other specialties in that
students travel to different locations to observe and learn. Dr.
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,” Dr. 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.” Dr.
Durette calls Davis the “secret sauce” to their success.
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
昀椀rst 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.
“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,
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