By John P.D. Shemo, MD, DLFAPA
Medical Director
Psychiatric Alliance of the Blue Ridge
Associate Clinical Professor
University of Virginia
Charlottesville, VA
At the Psychiatric Society of Virginia Board Meeting, prior to the PSV Scientific Meeting and Poster Session in Richmond on October 20 to 21, 2023, I had discussed my experience in reviewing the posters for the five awards the PSV Foundation provides for each poster session.
On this occasion, William Harp, MD and I were asked to serve as poster reviewers and select the recipients of these awards.
Dr. Harp, of course, is the Executive Director of the Virginia Board of Medicine and has been in that position for approximately 25 years. Prior to that, he had served as PSV representative to the American Psychiatric Association Assembly as well as serving as PSV President in 1989.
I have been on the faculty, currently the clinical faculty, at UVA since 1979. I have functioned as Investigator or Sub-Investigator in more than 80 research projects, mostly pharmacologic, but also some related to the development of clinical diagnostic or rating scales. I have served as PSV representative to the APA Assembly since the late 1990s, when I coincidentally served out the last two years of Dr. Harp’s last term, when he took the executive director position with the Board of Medicine.
There were 42 posters accepted at the fall meeting including several abstracts submitted, but not followed by a poster. I mention this because, of the abstracts presented but not followed by a completed poster, if the poster had accurately reflected the abstract, they would have been among those I selected for the awards.
Dr. Harp and I read all of the submissions and independently chose the five we each judged to receive the awards.
As we discussed at the board meeting, this was a daunting task, as the quality of the vast majority of these submissions was excellent. So many were so good, in fact, that while we had some overlap in our selections, there was also considerable diversion. This occurred despite the fact that Bill and I had independently formulated very similar criteria by which we would judge the posters. Given our degree of lack of overlap in selections, Bill and I did discuss the matter for about three hours before we submitted our ultimately compromised selections. Again, the quality of so many were so good that the task of judging was a true challenge.
I fully expect that the medical students and psychiatric residents, who are formulating these impressive projects, will continue with their excellent outcomes and future judges will face the same challenge as did Bill and I.
