A novel one-month elective rotation developed by Ramanpreet Toor, MD, with support from Jennifer Erickson, DO, and Debra Morrison introduces second-year psychiatry residents to concepts of population mental health, health care systems and integrated care models to improve access to mental health care. Given the curriculum’s success in our own psychiatry residency training program, Dr. Toor is working on a project to disseminate this curriculum to other academic institutions through a nation-wide learning collaborative funded by the Quell Foundation. Over a dozen people from different academic institutions have already signed up to learn how to implement the curriculum in their own programs. 

The rotation is offered ‘passport-style’ which means residents are provided with a list of activities to be completed during this month including readings, supervision meetings and clinical observations. At the end of the rotation, residents deliver a presentation on what they learned or about a project they plan to do based on the knowledge they gained in during the rotation. 

The passport-style rotation provides flexibility to learners with different learning styles and helps residents with professional development including working in a team, accountability, time management, and autonomy. It requires less faculty time and supervision time which in academic institutes is a problem given limited funding for non-clinical time for faculty. The content helps residents expand their focus from one patient in front of them to a larger population health focus, making them more aware of systems of healthcare and different ways to approach the significant problem of access to mental health care.