SECOND POSTGRADUATE YEAR

The PGY-II resident learns inpatient management skills on adult inpatient 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. The remainder of the year is dedicated to introducing the resident to the psychiatric subspecialties.  Residents also rotate for one month through emergency psychiatry where they experience a step up in responsibility, overseeing other mental health professionals managing acute crises. 

One day each week is set aside for seminars which include a basic psychosocial science course covering the life cycle, basic psychoanalytic concepts, sociocultural psychiatry, learning theory, cognitive theory, family systems theory, and a basic neurosciences course that involves a survey of DSM-IV with emphasis on the neuroscientific underpinnings of modern diagnosis and treatment.

A third course begins with a weekly unstructured T-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 an outpatient in the fall, adding a second long-term case in the winter.