Curriculum The four-year curriculum in Psychiatry at Wright State University is designed to fulfill appropriate educational goals for each phase of training, making maximum use of the available physical, human, and clinical resources. R-I The goal of the first year of training is to solidify the identity of the resident as a psychiatric physician. A firm grounding in medicine and neurology is integrated with early exposure to clinical psychiatry. The R-I resident attains familiarity with psychiatric diagnosis and therapeutics, and emerges prepared to continue with specialty training. The R-I curriculum consists of: Four months of Internal Medicine (inpatient and ambulatory; general and specialty) Two months of Neurology Four months of Psychiatry One month of Substance Abuse One month of Emergency Psychiatry

R-II

The second year of training marks the entry into full-time psychiatric education. Goals of the experience are to learn the fundamentals of diagnosis and therapeutics in hospitalized patients and to become familiar with the continuum of care for psychiatric patients.

Clinical rotations of R-II constitute hospital-based services, including:

• Two inpatient rotations of four months each
• Two months of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry
• One month of Partial Hospitalization
• One month of Child Psychiatry

At the beginning of the second year, residents begin to see patients in individual psychotherapy. Our residents have the unusual opportunity to follow some patients through as much as three years of intensive psychotherapy.

R-III

The R-III year is primarily devoted to learning outpatient psychiatry. The goals are to attain skill in various modalities of psychotherapy and outpatient pharmacotherapy, to become competent in the assessment and diagnosis of emotional disorders in children and adolescents, and to achieve proficiency in the care of individuals with severe and persistent mental disorders.

Most of the third year curriculum is devoted to treatment of patients in the outpatient clinics and in the residents' offices. Training is provided in psychodynamic individual psychotherapy, brief and focal therapies, cognitive therapy, marital and family therapy, group psychotherapy, supportive psychotherapy, and psychopharmacologic management of ambulatory patients. Residents receive longitudinal exposure to patients with chronic mental disorders, and a year of experience in outpatient child psychiatry.

R-IV

By the final year of the general psychiatry program, the resident has become a reliable therapist of many types of patients in varied settings. The goals of this year of training are to assimilate specialty skills and to pursue elective opportunities.

Each R-IV resident may serve three months as a Senior Resident Instructor, leading a clinical care team of junior residents and medical students. A rotation in Forensic Psychiatry and an experience in Administrative Psychiatry are provided to all R-IV residents.

Elective opportunities change from year to year; representative electives include:

• Advanced consultation-liaison
• Advanced child psychiatry
• Community psychiatry
• Geriatric psychiatry
• Marital and sex therapy
• Pain management
• Research
• Sleep disorders

Didactics

The rich didactic curriculum at Wright State University takes full advantage of the wealth of specialists available in the academic and clinical community. The courses are planned to correlate with the clinical rotations and educational goals of each training year, and to maximize the efficiency of the time spent reading and attending courses. Time for course attendance is protected on all resident rotations.

R-I courses address basic principles of Psychiatric Assessment, Descriptive Psychiatry, Biological Therapies, Neurology, Legal and Ethical Issues, Cultural and Gender Issues, Substance Abuse, and an Introduction to Psychotherapy.

In R-II, didactics include Growth and Development, Intermediate Psychotherapy, Psychopharmacology, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Developmental Disabilities, Brief Psychotherapies, Behavior Therapy and Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

Courses in R-III feature Cognitive Therapy, Family Therapy, Medical Ethics, Group Dynamics, Personality Disorders and Emergency Psychiatry, as well as a Psychotherapy Literature Seminar.

For R-IV residents, the lecture series highlights Teaching Techniques, Cross-cultural Psychiatry, and Transition to Practice. To practice the skills of life-long learning, R-IVs organize a didactic curriculum of their own design. The Psychotherapy Literature Seminar is shared with R-III residents.

Several seminars include residents from all four classes:

• Grand Rounds are held weekly. Speakers of national prominence are featured at least once a month. Department faculty address topics of specific interest, and senior residents are encouraged to research and deliver presentations in this forum.
• Continuous Case Conferences combine the best of faculty teaching and peer supervision. Residents present their long-term psychotherapy cases to their colleagues from all classes, and learn from professors' supervision, peers' observations, and their own observation of colleagues' cases. In this setting, even beginning residents can appreciate the process of long-term change in psychotherapy.
• Journal Club examines recent literature. At each session, a resident selects an article and a faculty discussant. Principles of research design and methodology, critical reading, and evidence-based medicine are emphasized.

Supervision

The community-based structure of the Department of Psychiatry allows residents to draw on the talents of an unusually large faculty. The central department faculty are full-time educators who function as the core of the training program, maintaining the focus of the educational philosophy. Each training site has faculty members with the designated task of teaching residents. Dozens of community psychiatrists eagerly donate their time for supervision of residents' psychotherapy cases, and for elective rotations. The generous didactic schedule and conference series augments the on-site and off-site supervisory hours to provide a high ratio of teaching to clinical work.

The faculty of award-winning teachers possesses a particular degree of expertise in the practice and teaching of psychotherapy. The time honored perspective of depth exploration of the minds and lives of our patients is applied in the context of a medical philosophy suitable for the twenty-first century.

It is a policy of the Wright State University School of Medicine that residents and medical students rotate together. The Department of Psychiatry wholeheartedly endorses this policy. Teaching is viewed as an integral part of the psychiatrist's job, and the training of medical students enhances the resident's learning.