Psychiatry Residency Program
Elk Ridge Community Health is excited to announce the launch of the first psychiatry residency program based in northern Arizona. The residency will provide a rigorous, comprehensive, community-focused training experience designed to prepare residents for compassionate and evidence-based psychiatric practice with special emphasis on smaller, rural, and Tribal communities where the need for outstanding mental health services is especially great.
Through an integrated curriculum that balances clinical care, academic learning, and scholarly activity, residents will gain the knowledge and skills needed to excel in a wide range of psychiatric settings. Graduates of the program will be prepared to serve as skilled clinicians, educators, and leaders ready to make meaningful contributions to the evolving field of psychiatry.
We anticipate accepting our first class of residents in July of 2027 and invite applicants who share our passion for compassionate care, lifelong learning, and discovery in psychiatric medicine.
Program Director's Welcome
Welcome to the Elk Ridge Community Health Psychiatry Residency Program, based in the vibrant mountain town of Flagstaff, Arizona. We’re a newly ACGME-accredited, community-based training program built to prepare psychiatrists to serve with skill and compassion across a broad range of clinical settings.
Psychiatry is a fascinating field, incorporating in one way or another nearly all that makes us human. Our program’s mission is to provide the educational experiences to become exceptional psychiatrists who love their work, are deeply motivated to understand and improve the health and well-being of their patients, and to maintain their own well-being over a long and satisfying career.
Elk Ridge Community Health is a Federally Qualified Health Center with 12 clinical sites across northern Arizona and is a division of El Rio Health. Elk Ridge also hosts a family medicine residency and our residents train alongside the Family Medicine residents for some rotations and we embrace a close relationship between psychiatry and family medicine.
In addition, our Flagstaff-based programs share resources with El Rio’s own psychiatry and medicine residencies in Tucson. These collaborations in graduate medical education strengthen all our programs.
As a developing program, we’re building a learning culture that’s supportive, intellectually curious, mission-driven, and responsive to resident growth — and as one of our first residents, you’ll help shape what that culture becomes.
I hope you’ll explore the rest of this site to learn more about Elk Ridge Psychiatry, and that you’ll consider joining us — to learn, and to help build something new.
– J. Kurt Mueller, MD
Program Director, Elk Ridge Community Health Psychiatry Residency
If you have questions or would like more information, please email us.
Maria Smith, Psychiatry Residency Coordinator