About the General Psychiatry Residency Training Program

• Introduction
• First Year                           
• Second Year                     
• Third Year                        
• Fourth Year 
• Night Call
• Research Training Program
• Curriculum
• Medical Student Teaching
• Resident Participatory Management

Introduction

The University of North Carolina General Psychiatry Residency Program offers a complete and balanced opportunity for medical school graduates to receive accredited training in general psychiatry. Our four-year program participates in the National Residency Match Program (NRMP) and regularly fills all available positions. Licensed physicians who have completed an approved PGY-1 (previously called internship) may apply for consideration of a three-year position. Currently we anticipate accepting thirteen residents for the coming academic year.

While much of our training experience takes place at UNC Hospitals in Chapel Hill, the facilities of Central Regional State Hospital in Butner, North Carolina are fully integrated into the program, as are a number of community psychiatry sites throughout the state. Our goal is to provide a clinical training experience that effectively integrates the biological, psychological, and social aspects of psychiatric theory and practice, while also developing a comprehensive knowledge base of psychodynamic principles with considerable emphasis on psychoanalytic theory. We are committed to ensuring that each trainee is firmly grounded in the current concepts and practice of psychopharmacology, neurobiology, electroconvulsive therapy, group therapy, family therapy, crisis and emergency psychiatry, consult liaison psychiatry, behavioral/cognitive approaches, community and social psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, and in understanding the scientific and research methods which underpin our specialty. We expect our graduates to be competent physicians appropriately grounded in medicine, neurology, and neuropsychiatry, as well as in general psychiatry.

Beyond our General Psychiatry residency program, we offer a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residency Training Program, which typically begins in the PGY-4. We also offer a Forensic Psychiatry Residency Training Program.  Eligibility for this residency program requires completion of a general psychiatric residency. Psychoanalytic training is also available through the Psychoanalytic Institute of the Carolinas.  This training may be initiated during the PGY-4.  There is a Community Psychiatry Fellowship in the UNC Center for Excellence in Community Mental Health and a Post-Doctoral Fellowship in Eating Disorders in the UNC Eating Disorders Program.

First Year

The first year of General Psychiatry residency includes a four-block* rotation on Medicine, six blocks of Adult Inpatient Psychiatry, one block of Child Inpatient Psychiatry, one block of Inpatient Neurology, and one block of Emergency Psychiatry.

Medicine Rotation

Residents are assigned to Central Regional State Hospital for two blocks of the PGY-1 Medicine rotation. This assignment is a particular asset to the program in that it provides residents with the opportunity to acquire broad-based general medical training experience in the context of caring for medically ill psychiatric patients. We feel the continuity of medical care provided to patients in this program, combined with the excellence of clinical supervision, is an extraordinary resource for resident education. The integration of the basic principles of internal medicine in a psychiatric population provides an exceptionally fertile opportunity for learning primary care medicine in a context particularly pertinent to the future careers of practicing psychiatrists.

Two blocks of the PGY-1 Medicine rotation are spent on the UNC Family Practice Inpatient service. The premise of this service is that hospital care is an essential part of the primary care of a population. Patients are admitted from a wide variety of family practitioners and general internists in the community. The UNC Department of Family Medicine has a national reputation for emphasis on critical appraisal of the literature and attention to the effectiveness of care. Care and teaching are evidence-based. 

Inpatient Psychiatry

Psychiatric training in the first year of residency includes a three-block rotation on the UNC Hospitals Inpatient Service. Residents rotate on the Acute Inpatient Crisis Stabilization service and the Acute Psychotic Disorders Inpatient service for a total of two blocks. Daily rounding and close supervision with teaching attendings is provided in both settings.

The PGY-1 experience now includes a one-block assignment on the Inpatient Adolescent Psychiatry service. During this rotation, residents round daily with a Child and Adolescent psychiatrist who provides clinical supervision. All Adult and Adolescent Inpatient services at UNC are interdisciplinary team-based.

Central Regional Hospital

At Central Regional Hospital, the Inpatient assignment includes four blocks on the Acute Adult Admissions service. Here, the rich variety of the patient population is combined with strong faculty supervision. The resident heads up an interdisciplinary team of mental health professionals whose combined efforts serve the challenging clinical needs of the assigned patients. Attending psychiatrists provide daily supervision, which is augmented by the addition of a mentoring supervisor. Both the Central Regional Hospital and UNC services include regular third-year medical student clinical assignments and medical student teaching serves as a catalyst in the education of both residents and students.

UNC Neurology

One hallmark of this residency program is our focus on ambulatory Psychiatry and our expectation that the resident will master psychotherapeutic skills. To assure this goal, residents spend their second year full-time in our ambulatory Psychiatry program, primarily in the UNC Hospitals Psychiatric Outpatient Clinic, with additional rotations to the Child Psychiatry Clinic and a community mental health center. During this year, residents participate in the evaluation of a large variety of adult and child outpatients, with training in emergency psychiatry, crisis intervention, psychopharmacology, and a broad range of psychotherapies. A special emphasis is placed on residents being able to master skills in the provision of long-term psychoanalytic insight-oriented psychotherapy involving three to four carefully chosen patients. Residents are assigned a minimum of two long-term psychotherapy supervisors, who each provide one hour of supervision per week. These supervisors are drawn from both full-time and community-based clinical faculty, many of whom are trained psychoanalysts. The on site presence of the Psychoanalytic Institute of the Carolinas provides both didactic and supervisory input to the residency experience.

Continuity of treatment experience is essential to truly mastering the subtlety of psychiatric practice. Therefore, we believe it important for residents to follow patients over time. Consequently, the third and fourth year have minimum ten-hour per week longitudinal tracts in the Outpatient Clinic dedicated to the ongoing care of ambulatory patients. In this context, the resident has continuity in long-term Psychotherapy training, as well as long-term clinical care and management of a broad spectrum of psychiatric patients. It should be noted that in the event a patient under the care of a third or fourth year resident requires hospitalization, the resident maintains some continuity of care for the patient on the Inpatient Service and receives the patient back into outpatient care upon discharge. We believe this is optimal for patient care as well as educational experience.

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Third Year

The third year of residency is composed of rotations, each of which is considered to be a three-quarter time assignment (allowing ongoing outpatient time of ten hours per week). The Consultation Liaison teaching service, a three-block rotation, is an academically charged service, which offers one-on-one bedside teaching by attendings who evaluate all patients with the residents. In addition, for the duration of the rotation, each resident is assigned to an interdisciplinary medical specialty program for a liaison experience that is supervised regularly by a faculty psychiatrist also involved with that program.

The two-block Neurology experience is described above (First Year).

Third year residents also spend three blocks on the UNC Geriatric Adult Inpatient Psychiatry service with a one-block sub-rotation on the Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) service and a one block sub-rotation on the Perinatal Inpatient service. Additional inpatient assignments in the third year include the UNC Child Inpatient unit, the Eating Disorders unit, and the UNC Crisis Stabilization service. Altogether, there are an additional six blocks of Inpatient Psychiatry in the PGY-3.  The one-block of Emergency Psychiatry experience is described above in the first year description.         

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Fourth Year

The final year of residency (PGY-4) includes a ten-hour commitment to ongoing outpatient work, which includes psychotherapy cases, as well as continuity of care for other patients. Additional hours each week are dedicated to the Crisis Service (follow-up of patients from our Walk-In Clinic and bridging appointments for recently discharged patients) and Substance Abuse (outpatient management of substance abuse patients). One day per week is dedicated to an advanced community psychiatry assignment, which allows the resident to select from a wide variety of elective choices that are available through an array of modern mental health facilities under the umbrella of the North Carolina Area Health Education Center (AHEC) program. This assignment may include clinical work with special populations (substance abuse, adolescents, criminal justice, rural services, mobile crisis approaches, etc.) or it may focus on administrative issues within the community or on research interests.

The remainder of the fourth-year is elective, with numerous opportunities available to the resident. Possible electives include chief residency and senior administrative opportunities, forensic psychiatry, substance abuse, consult liaison, community and public sector psychiatry, additional psychotherapeutic training, neuropsychiatry, geriatric and child and adolescent psychiatry, to name a few opportunities. Participation in a wide range of clinical and basic science research is also available. Residents design their electives in collaboration with faculty advisors.   

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Night Call

First-Year Night Call

Night call averages currently as follows: Central Regional Hospital Medicine Service every fourth night (q4); Central Regional Inpatient Psychiatry Service every fourth night (q4); UNC Emergency Psychiatry Service shifts for four weeks; and UNC Inpatient Neurology Service every fourth night (q4). First-year Psychiatry residents at UNC will have long call on Fridays, Saturdays, and some holidays.

Second-Year Night Call

Call rotates among the second-year residents as a group and occurs approximately twice a month. The call structure is supervised in all settings by senior faculty who are available to the resident and who actively participate with the resident in clinical decision making.  There is currently no third, or fourth year overnight call beyond emergency backup situations.  There is, however, a possibility of some limited third-year call in the future.  PGY-3, 4, 5, as well as Child and Adolescent Psychiatry residents will assist on weekend Inpatient Rounds, approximately q9 to q10 weekends.  It should be noted that we consider call to be a significant learning experience and treat it as such by providing active faculty back up and supervision in helping residents learn to manage challenging crisis situations.  

Research Training Program

The Research Training Program of the General Psychiatry Residency Curriculum is designed to provide progressive and intensive research training and experience to residents, in preparation for an academic career. The General Psychiatry Residency Curriculum emphasizes established and evolving knowledge relevant to the practice of psychiatric medicine, application of this knowledge to patient care, critical analysis of psychiatric literature and scientific evidence, and issues relevant to career development. The Research Training Program provides an in-depth opportunity for didactic and experiential training in research methodology and academic career development. Training opportunities are available in a wide range of clinical and neuroscientific disciplines, including descriptive phenomenology, epidemiology, clinical psychopharmacology, neuropsychology, neurophysiology, neuroimaging, epidemiologic and molecular genetics, behavioral and molecular pharmacology, molecular and developmental neurobiology. The Research Training Program can provide the formative basis for an academic and research-oriented career. The UNC Department of Psychiatry has a long and illustrious tradition of mentorship and preparing residents for academic careers. Historically, many of the leaders of academic psychiatry on a national and international level have come from the UNC training program. A wide array of world class resources, facilities, and faculty are available to support research within UNC and affiliated programs, and provide extensive training opportunities.

PGY 1

PGY 2

Residents selected for the Research Training Program will spend, beginning in PGY 2, at least a ½ day per week devoted to research and research training. A schedule of activities will be determined by the trainee, Residency Training Director, and the trainee's mentor or preceptor based on the interests, level of experience, and motivation of the trainee. This could include participation and implementation of research protocols on clinical service rotations, development of an independent research project, or laboratory based training experience. Didactic activities could include directed readings and tutorials, supervisory meetings with their research mentor, and participation in lab meetings. In addition, the resident will have the opportunity to take the NIH Human Subjects Training Course, participate in the UNC Research Fellowship Journal Club, and attend seminars in the UNC Alcohol Studies Center, the UNC Conte Schizophrenia Research Center, the UNC Neuro Research Center.

PGY 3

Residents will spend a minimum of ½ day per week devoted to research activities as outlined in PGY 2. In addition, they can elect to serve as research psychiatrist on the Central Regional Clinical Research Unit (CRU) for a period of time to be determined. The CRH CRU is the principal clinical site for Experimental Therapeutics Research associated with the UNC Mental Health Clinical Research Center. Other clinical research options include rotations through the Early Psychosis Research Program of the STEP Clinic, the Pediatric Psychosis Research Program, the Mood Disorders Research Program, and the Eating Disorders Research Program. Clinical and preclinical laboratory based experiences are also available.

PGY 4

PGY 4 residents in the Research Training Program will devote 80% time to research and research training.  Residents will determine a curriculum and schedule of activities with the Residency Training Director and their mentor. This will include the General Clinical Research Center Courses "Methods in Clinical Research" and "Responsible Conduct in Clinical Research". They will continue work with their mentor on a research project. In addition, they will receive instruction in scientific scholarship, writing for professional journals, and fund-raising and grantsmanship. They will be guided and expected to write and submit papers to scientific journals and develop a grant application.

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Curriculum

(View Curriculum diagram)

Residents are required to attend formal teaching seminars that are an active and integral part of each year of residency. The curriculum is designed for continuity year to year with an effort to integrate basic concepts of biological, psychodynamic, and behavioral principles. In addition, residents are exposed to group and family systems theory, as well as to the various treatment approaches and strategies targeting specific psychiatric syndromes and populations. Principles of community and social psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, cross cultural issues, minority issues, ethics, history of psychiatry, women's issues, and basic principles of office practice management, as well as consideration of career options in the academic and public sectors, are all considered. The changing health care systems, managed care influences, and the impact of changing financial systems are also considered as they impact psychiatry and the practicing psychiatrist.

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Medical Student Teaching

In addition to being students, we also expect our residents to be teachers. During the first three years of training, the resident is in regular contact with third-year medical students and is expected to assume considerable responsibility for their clinical training. In the fourth year, senior and chief residents are given the opportunity to participate in didactic offerings to medical students.

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Resident Participatory Management

A formal, organized resident group, called the Residents' Forum, with leaders and regular, departmentally-sanctioned meetings, serves a political, as well as a social, function for the residents. Residents at each level have substantial input into the management of their residency program. Elected representatives from each postgraduate year serve on the Residency Education Committee, the primary governing body for the residency. Faculty, in collaboration with elected resident representatives, help review, organize, and plan the program and curriculum for each resident class.

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