Supporting residents’ goals

Our mission is to support our residents so they can achieve their unique goals. Our schedule offers the flexibility and our faculty provides the depth and expertise to allow any resident to explore areas of clinical or research interest.

Unlimited options

We have found that a resident’s interests can evolve in unpredictable ways during their training. So, rather than having specific tracks with predefined rotations, we work with residents during their training to make use of our extensive elective time so that the training more fully aligns with the areas of psychiatry that most interests them and matches their unique strengths.

View the general overview of the program

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Balancing autonomy with support

One of our highlights is the strong focus on independence with supervision from extremely talented faculty.

As a PGY1, you work on an inpatient team that consists of the intern, attending, and medical students. During that first year, you work with our inpatient attendings, and they are able to learn your strengths and weaknesses, helping you improve along the way. That one-on-one time with our faculty allows you to learn from a varied group and take away strengths of each attending to add to your own skill set. By the end of the first year, our residents are able to not only lead with appropriate guidance from their supervisors a multidisciplinary inpatient treatment team but also to begin to work in the emergency room of the main academic hospital in our part of the country.

With our carefully thought-out educational program, our residents–by the end of 48 months–have been trained to handle some of the most difficult routine cases and are well equipped to critically read the literature so they can also handle those rare presentations of illness. Our residents are able to be leaders in clinical practice, academic psychiatry, and research.

We also have a strong group of alumni across the country, who are always excited to welcome a new graduate and are willing to help with the job search after training.

Creating top-notch clinicians

While seeing patients and practicing medicine is a critical part of residency training, such training only teaches a resident how to practice the current state of the art of psychiatry. We aim for our residents to not only be excellent clinicians at the time of graduation but also to be able to continue to practice cutting edge psychiatry throughout their careers. This latter ability requires residents to learn foundational knowledge across multiple areas– psychopharmacology, neuroanatomy, neuroscience, epidemiology, genetics, and psychotherapy–and, more importantly, to learn how to critically read the research articles that inform us of on-going advances in our field.

Our residents attend multiple conferences and seminars. Some of the sessions presented by our faculty as well as other high-profile visiting experts help residents to gain a deeper understanding of the scientific foundation of our field, to learn about current developments, and to reflect on the future. Other sessions are more hands-on where residents are pushed either alone or in groups to delve into specific topics. Finally, our residents obtain more intensive exposure to critical thinking during their 4-month required research experience.

This extensive training culminates in the fourth year with residents presenting to the department at two key conferences. The first is a 60-minute conference where residents present a clinical case of interest, reviewing pertinent data from the literature and leading a discussion about the decisions made. In the second, residents present the fruits of their research in the format of a 15-minute scientific oral presentation.