Research Opportunities

The University of Utah is committed to integrating research into its psychiatry residency program to refine critical thinking, reinforce evidence based treatment practices, and encourage the continued entry of clinicians into the research process as part of their career.

First-year residents are provided a number of resources in their training to expose them to current evidence-based practices, are encouraged to participate and present in regular journal clubs focused on current and landmark research studies in psychiatry, and hone their capacity to read and correctly interpret scientific literature that may have a bearing on their clinical decision making.

In the second year of training, residents attend conferences that provide an introduction to research principles and statistical techniques. Second-year residents will learn about the use of standardized rating scales, basic research statistics, and the workings of the Institutional Review Board (IRB), as well as how to submit a research proposal. Residents often begin research projects in their second year and are expected to continue this effort into their third and fourth years with culmination into a faculty-reviewed and approved “capstone” project that requires the dissemination of this work through publication, presentation, or other means. In addition to having project-based mentors, our program has a dedicated resident research mentor, Dr. Paul Carlson, who oversees residents’ progress in their research.

Residents are also encouraged (and provided funding) to attend national research conferences to present their work and to keep informed of cutting edge developments within the fields of their interests. The program is highly flexible, allowing significant research elective time to be set aside for the resident within the third and fourth years of residency on approved projects.

There is also a dedicated Research Track within the residency (complete with significant dedicated research time and separate allocated funding), which is designed for residents that plan to make research a larger component of their residency and career; see the ‘Tracks’ page for more details about the Research Track.

HMHI (formerly UNI) recently received a very generous gift of $150 million, some of which is being used to expand our research programs. Overall, the commitment to research at the University of Utah psychiatry residency program has never been stronger and we plan to continue growing this institution into a leading force in the psychiatric scientific community.