SECOND POSTGRADUATE YEAR

The PGYII year is designed to establish the resident’s identity as a psychiatrist, able to diagnose and manage the acute presentations of all major areas of psychopathology in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population of patients.

The PGY-II resident learns inpatient management skills on adult inpatient services and consult services at Parkland Memorial Hospital, the North Texas Veterans Affairs Health Care System, and Zale Lipshy University Hospital.  The resident becomes intimately acquainted with the major psychiatric disorders and learns pharmacologic, psychotherapeutic, electroconvulsive and team management approaches to severely disturbed psychiatric patients.

Community Psychiatry is strongly emphasized with one month on Homeless Services (including homeless shelters, homeless outreach on the streets, and transitional housing) and one month at Parkland Hospital’s treatment team at the Dallas County Jail, an innovative program aimed to provide top quality psychiatric treatment to inmates, a historically underserved group.

The full range of the life cycle is experienced in the PGY2 year, with rotations on Geriatric Psychiatry at the VA, and Child Psychiatry on the consult-liaison service at Children’s Hospital.  Residents also return for one month to emergency psychiatry where they experience a step up in responsibility, overseeing other mental health professionals managing acute crises and taking the lead in medical student education. 

A broad range of options are available during the one month selective, including:

1. Clinical rotations that include Inpatient child psychiatry, Child Day Treatment, Sleep medicine, Forensics, Telepsychiatry, and many others
2. Additional community programs including a program for offenders
4. Clinical research clinics (Bipolar disorder, Schizophrenia, Depression, Family studies, Women’s Mental Health)

One day each week is set aside for seminars which include Psychosocial Foundations of Psychiatry  (covering the life cycle, basic psychoanalytic concepts, sociocultural psychiatry, learning theory, cognitive theory, family systems theory)  and Fundamentals of Neuroscience (built around a survey of DSM-IV with emphasis on the neuroscientific underpinnings of modern diagnosis and treatment).

A third hour is devoted to a a weekly unstructured Training-group that emphasizes mutual support, problem solving, and experiential learning about small group processes followed by eight weeks of introductory didactics covering small group theory and process.

All second-year residents begin treating their first psychotherapy patient in the fall, adding a second long-term case in the winter.  Residents are supported with individual psychotherapy as well as a psychotherapy case conference during their didactics day.