Building an Impressive CV for Pediatrics-Psychiatry Residency: A Guide

Pediatrics-Psychiatry—and especially combined Triple Board (Pediatrics/General Psychiatry/Child & Adolescent Psychiatry)—attracts applicants who are thoughtful, longitudinally focused, and comfortable with complexity. Your CV is often the first clear signal that you understand this unique field and that your trajectory fits what programs are seeking.

This guide will walk you through how to build a CV for residency in pediatrics-psychiatry, with a special emphasis on:

• What matters most for peds psych residency programs
• How to organize and frame your experiences
• Specific residency CV tips and examples for Triple Board applicants
• Common pitfalls to avoid, especially on a medical student CV

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Understanding the Pediatrics-Psychiatry / Triple Board Lens

Before you revise a single line of your CV, you need to understand how it will be read.

What Programs Are Looking For

Program directors in pediatrics-psychiatry and Triple Board are usually scanning for:

1. Genuine interest in both pediatrics and psychiatry
   Not “I like kids” in one section and “psych is interesting” in another, but:

   • Longitudinal pediatrics exposure (e.g., continuity clinics, child health QI)
   • Clear psychiatry engagement (e.g., CL psychiatry, child psych electives)
   • Experiences that sit at the intersection (e.g., developmental clinics, autism centers, eating disorders, consult-liaison work with kids, behavioral pediatrics)

2. Evidence of longitudinal commitment
   Triple Board and peds-psych programs value continuity:

   • Multi-year involvement in a clinic, project, or organization
   • Progression of responsibility over time (member → leader → builder)
   • Ongoing advocacy or research in child mental health, trauma, health equity

3. Interdisciplinary and systems thinking
   The combined training requires navigating medicine, psychiatry, schools, families, and community systems. Programs look for:

   • Collaboration across disciplines (social work, psychology, education)
   • Quality improvement (QI) or systems-based projects
   • Population health, public health, or policy exposure—especially in child mental health

4. Maturity and self-awareness
   While this doesn’t appear as a line item, it’s inferred from:

   • Thoughtful, coherent trajectory
   • Not too many random, unconnected short-term activities
   • Activities that show reliability, follow-through, and service

Your CV should make it obvious that pediatrics-psychiatry is not an afterthought—it is the natural next step of what you have been building toward.

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Structuring an Excellent Pediatrics-Psychiatry Residency CV

There is no single “correct” CV format, but for residency applications your document should be:

• Chronological (reverse chronological within each section)
• Clean and consistent with formatting
• Aligned with (but not identical to) what you enter in ERAS

Core Sections for a Medical Student CV

A robust pediatrics-psychiatry or Triple Board CV for residency usually includes:

1. Contact Information & Education
2. USMLE/COMLEX and Other Credentials (optional to include; often separate in ERAS)
3. Clinical Experience (if separate from education)
4. Research Experience
5. Publications, Presentations & Posters
6. Leadership & Service
7. Teaching & Mentorship (often overlooked but highly valued)
8. Honors & Awards
9. Professional Memberships
10. Skills & Certifications
11. Interests (short, but surprisingly important)

Not all of these will be equally robust for every applicant—but having clear buckets helps reviewers quickly find what they care about.

General Formatting Rules

• Length: 1–3 pages is typical for a medical student applying to residency. For peds-psych/Triple Board, 2–3 pages is common due to research and advocacy work.
• Font: 10–12 pt, clean (e.g., Arial, Calibri, Times New Roman).
• Margins: ~0.5–1 inch, consistent throughout.
• Name on every page: Header or footer with name and page number.

Use consistent structure across entries:

• Role/Title
• Organization, City, State
• Dates (Month Year – Month Year)
• 1–3 concise bullet points using action verbs and outcomes

Example entry (Leadership & Service):

Co-Director, Child Wellness Initiative
Student-Run Free Clinic, City, State | Jul 2022 – May 2024

• Led a multidisciplinary team of 12 students to implement a behavioral screening protocol for children ages 5–12, integrating PSC-17 screening into well-child visits.
• Increased documented behavioral health referrals by 40% over one academic year through creation of a referral toolkit and community partner list.

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Highlighting Pediatrics-Psychiatry-Relevant Experiences

The most effective peds psych residency CVs make your interest in the combined field unmistakable—without you ever saying “I am interested in Triple Board” in the CV itself.

1. Education and Clinical Experiences: Make the Overlap Visible

Under your medical school entry, you can selectively highlight experiences that carry peds-psych weight:

Example: Education Section with Targeted Highlights

Medical Student (M.D. Candidate, Class of 2025)
University School of Medicine, City, State | Aug 2021 – May 2025

• Pediatrics Sub-Internship, Children’s Hospital: Focus on complex chronic disease management and behavioral concerns in school-age children.
• Psychiatry Sub-Internship, Inpatient Child & Adolescent Unit: Participated in multidisciplinary rounds with pediatrics, social work, and psychology.
• Elective: Developmental-Behavioral Pediatrics Clinic (4 weeks).
• Elective: Pediatric Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (4 weeks).

You don’t have to list every rotation—but including your pediatrics and child/adolescent psychiatry experiences here makes the trajectory extremely clear.

2. Research: Emphasize Child and Mental Health Themes

For a medical student CV, research can be the differentiator—especially in a niche field like pediatrics-psychiatry.

Common relevant areas:

• ADHD, autism spectrum disorder, or learning disorders
• Trauma, ACEs (Adverse Childhood Experiences), foster care, juvenile justice
• Eating disorders, somatic symptom conditions, or functional disorders
• School-based mental health programs
• Integrated behavioral health in pediatric primary care

Example Research Entry:

Research Assistant, Pediatric Behavioral Health Integration Study
Department of Pediatrics, University School of Medicine, City, State | Jun 2022 – Present
PI: Dr. Smith

• Conducted chart reviews of 300 pediatric patients to evaluate outcomes after implementation of on-site behavioral health screening and warm handoffs.
• Co-authored abstract accepted for platform presentation at the National Conference on Pediatric Integrated Care (2024).
• Developed caregiver survey assessing barriers to mental health follow-up; data contributed to practice QI initiatives.

If your project is not obviously peds-psych, you can still make it relevant with emphasis on developmental stage, family systems, or mental health components in your bullet points.

3. Leadership and Service: Show Longitudinal Child-Focused Work

Programs value evidence that you care about children, families, and systems beyond required clinical rotations.

Examples that play especially well for peds-psych:

• Long-term involvement in a free clinic with pediatric patients
• Leadership in a mental health advocacy group or pediatric interest group
• Work in school-based programs, mentoring youth, or tutoring in underserved schools
• Community outreach around child mental health, suicide prevention, bullying, or trauma

Example Entry:

Co-Founder, Student Coalition for Child Mental Health Equity
University School of Medicine | Sep 2021 – May 2024

• Organized quarterly workshops for medical students on trauma-informed care, ADHD in primary care, and pediatric depression screening.
• Partnered with local schools to host parent education sessions on recognizing early signs of emotional distress and navigating mental health resources.
• Secured $3,000 in institutional funding to support educational materials and transportation for outreach events.

4. Teaching and Mentorship: Underrated, Highly Valuable

Pediatrics-psychiatry doctors are educators—of children, families, trainees, and systems. Programs like to see you already operate in that role.

Examples:

• Small-group facilitator for M1 courses
• Peer tutor in neuro, psych, or pediatrics
• Mentor for high school or college pre-med students
• Teaching assistant for a child development, neuroscience, or psychology course

Example Entry:

Peer Tutor, Behavioral Sciences and Child Development
University School of Medicine | Jan 2023 – Dec 2023

• Provided weekly small-group review sessions for first-year students focusing on developmental milestones, attachment theory, and psychiatric interviewing skills with children and adolescents.
• Developed practice cases that integrated pediatric presentations with underlying psychosocial and family dynamics.

Teaching roles reinforce your suitability for a field that sits at the crossroads of education, advocacy, and clinical care.

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Tailoring Each Section: Concrete Residency CV Tips

Below are specific, tactical suggestions for each major CV section, with a pediatrics-psychiatry lens.

Contact & Education

Do:

• Use a professional email address.
• Include your anticipated graduation date.
• List relevant additional degrees (MPH, MS in psychology, etc.) and thesis titles if they are child- or psych-related.

Don’t:

• List your full street address—city and state are sufficient.
• Overcrowd this section with unrelated undergraduate activities; those belong later.

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Research & Scholarly Work

For applicants targeting peds psych residency or Triple Board:

• Group items logically:
  • “Peer-Reviewed Publications”
  • “Manuscripts Under Review”
  • “Abstracts and Posters”
  • “Oral Presentations”
• Use consistent citation style (often AMA or journal-standard).
• Bold your name in author lists to make your role visible.

If your project is in progress, label it honestly:

• “Data collection ongoing”
• “Manuscript in preparation” (only if you’re actively working on it)

Residency CV tip:
If you have many items, denote peds-psych-relevant ones with carefully written titles and short descriptions that highlight child/mental health components. You do not need to mark them with stars; the wording should make it obvious.

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Leadership & Service

This is often where Triple Board programs find your “fit.” Emphasize:

• Duration: Multi-year commitments are more impressive than brief stints.
• Scope: Did you manage people? Design curricula? Interface with external partners?
• Impact: Include quantifiable outcomes when possible.

Weak example:

Volunteer, Free Clinic, 2022–2024

• Helped with pediatric patients.

Stronger example:

Pediatric Behavioral Health Navigator, Student-Run Free Clinic
City, State | Aug 2022 – May 2024

• Screened children ages 8–17 for anxiety and depression using PHQ-A and GAD-7 during primary care visits.
• Coordinated referrals to community therapists and tracked follow-up, improving completed referral rate from 30% to 55% over one year.
• Developed a bilingual resource packet for families on accessing school-based mental health services.

“Navigator,” “coordinator,” “director” or “lead” roles signal initiative and systems thinking—key for pediatrics-psychiatry.

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Skills, Certifications & Additional Training

Include items particularly relevant to children and mental health, such as:

• Trauma-Informed Care training
• Motivational Interviewing workshops
• Mental Health First Aid certification
• Applied Behavioral Analysis (ABA) exposure (if applicable)
• Language skills (especially if you use them clinically)

Example:

Skills & Certifications

• Conversational Spanish; used in clinical encounters during pediatrics and psychiatry rotations.
• Certified in Youth Mental Health First Aid (2023).
• Proficient with REDCap and SPSS for clinical data management and analysis.

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Interests: A Small Section with Strategic Value

For pediatrics-psychiatry, interests can reinforce your fit:

• Youth sports coaching
• Children’s literature
• Creative arts with kids (music, drawing, drama)
• Storytelling, narrative medicine, graphic medicine
• Mindfulness, yoga, or play-based activities

Avoid generic, uninformative lists. Be specific:

Interests: Early childhood literacy advocacy, adolescent graphic novels, community soccer coaching, narrative medicine workshops.

These can become meaningful conversation starters in interviews and help programs see you as a relatable, child- and family-centered future colleague.

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Common Pitfalls in CVs for Peds-Psych and Triple Board

Even strong applicants undermine their story through avoidable missteps. Watch for these.

1. A “Pile” of Activities Without a Narrative

If your CV looks like:

• One short pediatrics volunteer activity
• One brief psychiatry research project
• Two unrelated global health trips
• Scattered shadowing in different specialties

…it may read as unfocused.

Fix:
Group and order your experiences so that the pediatrics-psychiatry thread is unmistakable:

• Put child- and psych-related things higher within sections.
• Use bullet points that emphasize developmental, family, and systems aspects.
• De-emphasize truly unrelated items (keep them short and toward the bottom).

2. Overloading with Undergraduate Activities

Programs care mainly about who you are now. Some undergrad activities matter, especially if they directly relate to children, mental health, or leadership.

Include from undergrad:

• Significant leadership roles
• Research especially relevant to peds-psych
• Intensive service or teaching with children/adolescents

Skip or minimize:

• Brief club memberships with no defined role
• Activities that ended years before medical school with no continuity

3. Vague, Non-Actionable Bullet Points

Avoid:

• “Helped care for children in clinic.”
• “Interested in child mental health.”
• “Advocated for improved services.”

Instead, show what you did and achieved:

• Tools used (screeners, instruments, curricula)
• Partnerships built (schools, social work, community orgs)
• Measurable outcomes (attendance, screenings, referrals, satisfaction)

Residency CV tip:
Use action verbs like “implemented,” “coordinated,” “designed,” “analyzed,” “led,” “developed,” “evaluated,” “advocated,” “collaborated.”

4. Inconsistency Between CV, ERAS, and Personal Statement

Program directors often cross-check:

• Activities listed in ERAS
• Descriptions in ERAS vs. CV
• Themes in your personal statement

Avoid:

• Exaggerating roles in the CV that don’t match ERAS descriptions
• Creating separate, conflicting narratives (e.g., ERAS heavy in surgery research, CV heavily child-psych, PS talking about something totally different)

Aim for:

• A coherent, reinforced story:
  • CV: details and concrete evidence
  • ERAS: structured entries
  • Personal statement: your reflection on why the path matters to you

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Step-by-Step Plan: How to Build Your CV for Pediatrics-Psychiatry

If you’re starting from scratch or doing a major overhaul, follow this sequence.

Step 1: Dump Everything Into a Master Document

List all experiences:

• Clinical, research, leadership, service, teaching, jobs, certifications
• Include dates, supervisors, locations, hours (roughly), and outcomes

Don’t worry about structure yet—just gather.

Step 2: Highlight Peds-Psych-Relevant Items

Go through your list and mark items that involve:

• Children, adolescents, or families
• Mental health, developmental, or behavioral themes
• Systems, schools, foster care, juvenile justice, or social determinants of health

You’re identifying the backbone of your peds-psych story.

Step 3: Build the Framework (Sections and Order)

Create section headings (Education, Research, Leadership, etc.) and decide:

• Which experiences go where
• How to order items within each section (reverse chronology, with child-psych relevant items closest to the top when possible)

Step 4: Write Strong, Peds-Psych-Specific Bullets

Use 1–3 bullets per entry:

• Start with the strongest action verb.
• Include:
  • What you did
  • With whom (kids? families? schools?)
  • How often / how many
  • What changed or improved

Ask yourself: “If a program director reads just these bullets, will they understand my skills and commitment in pediatrics-psychiatry?”

Step 5: Clean Up Formatting and Consistency

Check:

• Spacing, indentation, fonts
• Date formats (e.g., “Aug 2022 – May 2024” used the same way throughout)
• Grammar and spelling
• Use of past vs. present tense
  • Past experiences → past tense
  • Ongoing roles → present tense

Step 6: Get Feedback—But Strategic Feedback

Ask for review from:

• A mentor in pediatrics or child psychiatry
• A resident in Triple Board or peds-psych (if available)
• Your school’s career or advising office

Ask them:

• “Does my interest in pediatrics-psychiatry come through clearly?”
• “What experiences seem most impressive or relevant?”
• “Where does my CV feel unfocused or redundant?”

Incorporate feedback while preserving your authentic trajectory.

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FAQs About CV Building for Pediatrics-Psychiatry and Triple Board

1. How is a peds psych residency / Triple Board CV different from a general pediatrics CV?

A peds-psych/Triple Board CV:

• Features more psychiatry and mental health content: research, electives, advocacy, and service.
• Emphasizes integrated and interdisciplinary experiences, like behavioral health in primary care, school collaboration, or trauma-informed programming.
• Highlights systems and family-based work more explicitly.

A general pediatrics CV might focus more on:

• Purely medical QI and clinical outcomes
• Subspecialty pediatrics experiences without a strong behavioral or developmental emphasis
• Less psychiatry-specific research or coursework

Your CV should consistently show you are comfortable thinking in both medical and psychiatric frameworks for children and adolescents.

2. I don’t have formal child psychiatry research—can I still be a strong applicant?

Yes. Programs understand not every school has extensive child psych research. You can strengthen your medical student CV by:

• Highlighting any psychiatry research and clearly describing pediatric or developmental angles (if present).
• Emphasizing clinical or service roles that demonstrate child mental health engagement: screening, counseling, liaison with schools or social workers.
• Showing longstanding interest in children and families through teaching, coaching, mentoring, or advocacy.

When you lack research in one area, compensate with depth and continuity in clinical, leadership, or service roles.

3. Should I include non-medical jobs or experiences on my residency CV?

Include non-medical jobs if they show:

• Responsibility, leadership, or resilience (e.g., working multiple jobs to fund education)
• Skills relevant to peds-psych: teaching, counseling, working with children, crisis work, social services

For example:

• Camp counselor, teacher, ABA therapist, social work assistant, youth sports coach, crisis hotline worker

Briefly describe them with emphasis on:

• Populations served
• Communication or counseling skills
• Systems navigation (schools, courts, social services)

Avoid clutter from jobs or roles that add little to your professional narrative (e.g., very short-term retail jobs) unless they explain important context about your path.

4. How do I adapt my CV if I’m applying to both Triple Board and categorical pediatrics or psychiatry?

You can maintain one core CV with slight tailoring for each audience:

For Triple Board / peds-psych:

• Place child psychiatry and integrated experiences more prominently.
• Emphasize work at the medicine–psychiatry interface.
• Highlight systems-level or interdisciplinary projects.

For categorical pediatrics:

• Emphasize general pediatrics research, clinical excellence, and QI.
• Retain psychiatry content but angle it toward improving pediatric care and communication.

For categorical psychiatry:

• Emphasize psychiatry research and clinical experiences, including adult psych if applicable.
• Frame pediatric experiences as evidence of your interest in lifespan or early-intervention mental health.

The base document stays the same; your ordering, emphasis, and sometimes section headings shift slightly to match the specific program type.

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By crafting a clear, coherent, and pediatrics-psychiatry-focused CV, you give programs a compelling, concrete picture of who you are and how you will contribute to their teams. When done well, your CV doesn’t just list your experiences—it tells the story of a future physician who is uniquely prepared to care for children at the intersection of body, brain, and environment.