Curriculum

All residents complete three months of internal medicine, one month of emergency medicine and two months of neurology. Non-psychiatric rotations are completed throughout the PGY-1 year. Residents may elect to substitute two months of pediatrics for two of their internal medicine months. The primary clinical focus of psychiatric training during the PGY-1 year is on learning to diagnose and treat acute and severe psychiatric illness in hospital settings. PGY-1s rotate on the Northwestern Memorial Hospital (NMH) inpatient psychiatry unit, Jesse Brown VA Medical Center inpatient psychiatry unit, consult-liaison psychiatry service at NMH and the partial hospitalization program at Ann & Robert H. Lurie Children’s Hospital of Chicago.

In the second year, residents solidify skills managing acute, severe psychiatric illness on inpatient psychiatry, consultation-liaison psychiatry and emergency psychiatry rotations. Night float at NMH, geriatric psychiatry rotation, child and adolescent consultation-liaison service rotation and electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) training also occur during the PGY-2 year. Outpatient psychotherapy training and supervision start in the second half of this year during Immersion Clinic. PGY-2s have dedicated elective time to explore individual career interests.

The primary clinical focus of the third year is learning to treat psychiatric illness in outpatient settings. In Resident Continuity Clinic at NMH, residents have their own caseload of patients with direct supervision in real time from faculty. Residents see patients for individual psychotherapy and meet with a psychotherapy supervisor. Residents also rotate in two faculty subspecialty clinics each week to develop greater expertise with direct supervision from faculty experts (e.g., neuropsychiatry, women’s mental health, first-break psychosis, anxiety disorders, young adults). Residents spend one half day a week at the VA gaining experience in treatment of substance use disorders and community psychiatry.

Fourth-year residents continue with a minimum of two half days' outpatient work at NMH. The rest of PGY-4 is spent in elective rotations both at Northwestern and at other sites of residents’ choosing, including research or administrative experiences. Residents also spend one evening a week for six months at The Family Institute, where they will have family and couple's therapy cases with weekly supervision.