1. Molly M. Gathright, MD 1 ; Shane Sparks, MD 1 ; Carol R. Thrush, EdD 2 ; Brynn Mays MLS 3 ; Lewis Krain, MD 1 1 UAMS Department of Psychiatry, 2 UAMS Office of Educational Development, 3 UAMS Library Background  In many general higher education universities, explicit policies discourage departments from recruiting their own doctoral graduates.  In medical schools, however, there is little evidence to suggest that such policies exist or that they would be valued by institutional stakeholders.  When a critical need for competent clinicians exists, a resident from one’s own institution is a “known quantity” who has been trained to perform in that specific medical and cultural environment. Such individuals may even be considered a superior faculty candidate over one externally-trained.  To date, there is no published literature at either an institutional or national level regarding retention of a department's residents as faculty members.  The purpose of this study was to examine nationally representative data in relation to the frequency with which psychiatry physician faculty members are employed in the same institutions where they completed residency training. Methods  The authors identified a 20% random sample of psychiatry departments from among all AAMC- affiliated medical schools.  Publicly available data from departmental websites was obtained to determine the location of residency program completed for all physician faculty members.  Departments with largely incomplete information (e.g., >20%) regarding location of residency education were excluded from review and analysis.  The frequency and percent of physician faculty members was computed for each medical school as shown in Table 1. For additional information, please contact: Molly M. Gathright, MD Department of Psychiatry University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences gathrightmollym@uams.edu Conclusions  This study presents the first nationally-representative examination of this topic in psychiatry departments.  Results suggest that recruiting one’s own graduating residents is common practice in academic psychiatry, and there is wide variation in this practice across institutions in the U.S.  The broad range in the study results raises a number of questions which call for additional exploration. For example, further study is needed to examine whether this difference is correlated with other factors such as geographical area, size, financial status, prestige/reputation, departmental standing and strength, medical student recruitment, recruitment ethic, salary, job opportunities, facilities associated with training site, mentoring quality, etc.  It would be interesting to discern if this pattern of internal faculty recruitment is generalizable to other specialties. To the authors’ knowledge, there is no national data in other specialties regarding this topic.  The study results are limited to the extent that departmental website information is current and accurate. The Transition from Resident to Psychiatry Faculty: Do They Stay or Do They Go?  Results  Table 1 lists results for the 26 psychiatry departments from all AAMC-affiliated medical schools reviewed for this study.  The medical schools are displayed in Table 1 in ascending order according to the percent of internally trained physician faculty members.  As shown, 0% to 71% of physician faculty members within a psychiatry department are currently employed by the university where they completed residency training.