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Seminars

We have a stimulating and comprehensive didactic program. All residents meet weekly for resident seminars, and there is a monthly journal club and research-interest club. Grand Rounds are held weekly and involve interaction with faculty from around the country. 
 
The didactic curriculum begins in the PG-I year with courses in emergency psychiatry, inpatient psychiatry, psychopharmacology, managed care, epidemiology, community and social psychiatry, and statistics in literature. 
 
Psychotherapy training begins in the PG-II year with a weekly seminar devoted to didactic and case material. Additionally, topics in interviewing and family therapy are covered.  Psychopharmacology, substance abuse, consult liaison psychiatry, and biological psychiatry complete the curriculum for the PG-II year. 
 
The PG-III year focuses on the development of psychotherapy skills including long-term, brief, and cognitive behavioral therapies. A weekly psychotherapy on-going case conference allows for discussion of psychotherapy approaches, skills, and theories. Additionally, a one-way screen exercise allows residents to observe a faculty member treat an on-going therapy patient. Group therapy supervision and discussion also takes place weekly. 
 
The didactic curriculum in the PG-IV year includes a seminar in a variety of advanced psychiatric topics including advanced psychopharmacology, administrative psychiatry, transitioning from residency, and leadership skills. In addition, there is an advanced psychotherapy course that helps residents hone their understanding and application of psychodynamic theory in the clinical setting.
 
The following two seminar series take place in alternate years for the PGY-III and PGY-IV residents: The functional neuroanatomy course (see below) helps correlate neuroanatomical relationships with clinical presentations of psychiatric disorders. The clinical neurology course emphasizes common neurological illnesses as well as other topics in neurology relevant to psychiatry.

Functional Neuroanatomy of Psychiatric Disorders Course

Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD, Course Instructor

Abstract

The literature on the functional neuroanatomy of psychiatric disorders is expanding exponentially. Psychiatry is in the midst of a paradigm shift from a nosology based on symptoms and syndromes to one based on pathophysiology. To prepare psychiatric residents for the inevitable transformation in how psychiatric disorders are conceptualized and treated, we have created a course focusing on the functional neuroanatomy of psychiatric disorders. This course covers basic neuroanatomy, the fundamentals of functional and structural neuroimaging, some of the basics in cognitive neuroscience and an overview of major psychiatric disorders from a systems neuroscience perspective. The primary goal is to enable residents to understand some of the fundamentals of how the brain works and to begin to think about psychiatric disorders and the process of change in psychotherapy from a brain perspective. Readings are from both the lay and professional literature. The seminars are highly interactive to ensure that residents can address the questions that are of interest to them. This course is updated every two years to ensure that it is current. A previous description of the course, and the very favorable evaluation of the course by residents, was published in Academic Psychiatry 2001; 25:148-155 by Richard D. Lane, MD, PhD, Rebecca L. Potter, MD.