We try to give our fellows a solid foundation in psychopharmacology, psychodynamic theory, family therapy, and neuroscience.  Many of our didactics have a seminar format.  Reading material is always provided, and reading around the subject is encouraged, before and after didactics sessions.  

However, we also make sure to discuss other issues pertinent to CAP, including career planning, legal issues, neuromodulation, and popular culture.  We encourage fellows to be familiar with the issues that concern their patients and with the media content that their patients consume, and we have a list of books, short stories, films, and shows that can facilitate this for interested fellows. 

Scholarly activity and research projects are encouraged at the University of Minnesota.  While you are still in fellowship training, we strongly encourage you to maintain scholarly activity.  This can include writing case series on interesting psychopathological presentations, commenting on developments in the field, teaching residents and medical students, contributing to - or even spearheading - literature reviews, and helping to recruit patients for the studies of your research colleagues.  Also, do not forget that you can often encounter interesting systems issues that you can write about with your colleagues in nursing and other allied professions, to help disseminate knowledge about process management in clinical settings. 

The University of Minnesota CAP Fellowship training program does not offer a separate research track, but we do give scholarly time to all trainees, especially in FY2 year.  Previous fellows have used this time to create posters, write papers, or design and teach curricula. 

An academic career is a longer-term goal than individual scholarly projects.  We encourage any trainee who is considering an academic psychiatry career to begin the process of building this portion of their professional life as soon as possible.  Part of our new, annual orientation program is discussing how to build a portfolio of thematically related publications, expand your national presentations [both oral and written], and potentially apply for grant funding. If you are considering a formal research career in clinical psychiatry, we strongly recommend that you discuss this with the program director and your research mentors as soon as possible.