Role of clinical trainees

Abstract Correctional settings are important and worthy training sites for medical students, general psychiatry residents, child and adolescent psychiatry residents, and forensic psychiatry fellows. Logically, educating future clinicians on how to best treat individuals with mental illness should occur in settings that most commonly treat them. Despite a resulting increased need for correctional psychiatrists, most general psychiatry residency programs do not currently provide training in a correctional site. Educators interested in developing academic teaching affiliations should anticipate concerns by trainees and be prepared to address those concerns, including about staff safety, dual agency, correctional culture, and clinical supervision. Although these challenges can be daunting, the opportunities for matching current psychiatric training requirements with correctional settings abound. Providing care to individuals with mental illness where they live increasingly means providing care to those persons while they are incarcerated in jails and prisons.