Schedule and Locations

The second year of residency is designed to establish your identity as a psychiatrist and your ability to diagnose and manage the acute presentations of all major areas of psychopathology in an ethnically and socioeconomically diverse population of patients.

General Inpatient

Duration: 4 months
Locations: Parkland Hospital, William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Call expectations: Weekend, overnight, night-float, and home call depending on site.

Experiences include continued development of skills in inpatient management of acute and chronic psychiatric illnesses, inpatient and outpatient ECT, and psychotherapy.

Psychiatric Emergency Services

Duration: 2 months
Location: Parkland Psychiatric Emergency Room

Call expectations: 14 overnight shifts/month.

During shifts, residents will also be working as on-call cross-cover for the Parkland and UT Southwestern inpatient units. The resident’s priority is to manage the needs of the inpatient units.

When free from inpatient duties, residents will gain additional exposure in emergency psychiatry by working on a psychiatry team in the Parkland emergency department. Our Psychiatric Emergency Services are staffed continuously by attending psychiatrists on-site, providing especially thorough supervision and guidance.

Elective

Duration: 1 month
Location: Varies, depending on chosen elective. We have an extensive listing of electives. Our Residency Program also encourages residents to create their own electives under mentorship of attending faculty.

Geriatric Psychiatry

Duration: 1 month
Location: Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center

Call expectations: Weekend, night float, overnight, and evening shifts are expected. Short call duties.

During this month, residents will work under the direction of faculty geriatric psychiatrists on the Silver team at the VA Medical Center. Educational experiences include, but are not limited to, management of psychiatric illness in the elderly population, understanding the effect of comorbid medical and neurologic issues in geriatric patients, and evaluation and treatment of dementia.

Community Psychiatry

Duration: 2 months
Location: Dallas County Jail; Metrocare Services

• Dallas County Jail, Lew Sterrett Facility: Residents have the unique experience of being trained in community psychiatry and exposed to forensic psychiatry in one of the country’s largest county jails. Duties include psychiatric evaluation and treatment of defendants (under direct supervision of an attending psychiatrist) and attendance at psychopharmacology, forensic psychiatry, and general psychiatry lectures.
• Metrocare Services: Residents spend a month on an Assertive Community Treatment (ACT) team, learning how psychiatrists work in multidisciplinary teams to help patients find long-term recovery through intensive outpatient services.

Consultant-Liaison Psychiatry

Duration: 3 months
Locations: Parkland Hospital, William P. Clements Jr. University Hospital, and Children’s Health℠ Children’s Medical Center

Call expectations: Weekend and home call.

The Consult-Liaison Psychiatry Service is a collaborative and multidisciplinary team that includes attending psychiatrists, attending psychologists, residents, social workers, and medical students. Residents will provide evaluations, medication recommendations, psycho-education, and psychotherapy under supervision of an attending psychiatrist. This rotation includes weekly conferences and daily interdisciplinary rounds.

What Residents Learn

One day each week is set aside for didactics.

Psychosocial Foundations of Psychiatry: Begins with an Introduction to Psychotherapy and then covers the life cycle, basic psychoanalytic concepts, socio-cultural psychiatry, learning theory, cognitive theory, and family-systems theory.

Fundamentals of Neuroscience: Learn the neuroscientific underpinnings of modern diagnosis and treatment.

Psychotherapy Continuous Case Conference: Discuss your new psychotherapy cases with experienced and supportive faculty.

Research Track Program: If you elect to pursue the Research Track Program, you will attend weekly sessions covering topics such as research design, data analysis, writing grants, and the critical evaluation of research literature. You will also attend a seminar series that will familiarize you with the research process.

Balance and Diversity

As a second-year resident, you will learn inpatient management skills for adult inpatient and consult services at Parkland, the Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Zale Lipshy Pavilion. PGY-2 residents will become intimately acquainted with the major psychiatric disorders and will learn pharmacologic, psychotherapeutic, electroconvulsive, and team management approaches to severe psychiatric illness.

Community Psychiatry is strongly emphasized in every rotation and especially during the month with Parkland's treatment team at the Dallas County Jail, an innovative program aimed at providing top-quality psychiatric treatment to inmates, a historically underserved group.

Another emphasis is on learning psychotherapy. You will begin your work in the Southwestern Psychotherapy Clinic, seeing outpatient psychotherapy patients weekly. We also strive to integrate psychotherapy into acute psychiatric settings. You will learn cognitive-behavior therapy on inpatient rotations and participate in case conferences that focus on thinking about very ill patients from a psychosocial perspective.

The full range of the life cycle is experienced during your second year, with rotations in geriatric psychiatry at the VA Medical Center and child psychiatry on the Consult-Liaison Service at Children’s Medical Center. You will also spend a month in emergency psychiatry, where you will experience a step up in responsibility—overseeing other mental health professionals, managing acute crises, and taking the lead in medical student education.

Opportunities

You will be provided a broad range of options for your 1-month selective:

• Clinical rotations that include inpatient child psychiatry, child day-treatment, sleep medicine, forensics, telepsychiatry, and many others
• Additional community programs including ACT teams, adolescent treatment at the juvenile detention center, and many others
• Clinical research clinics (bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, depression, family studies, women’s mental health)

Residents in the Research Track Program will begin to meet with their mentors to establish relationships with research faculty and to explore areas of research interests.

What Makes Our Program Special

Psychotherapy

In your second year as a resident, you will begin treating your first psychotherapy patient in the fall, adding a second long-term case in the winter. You will be supported with individual supervision, as well as a psychotherapy case conference during your didactics day.

Elective Time

We reserve 1 month in the PGY-2 year as elective so that you can begin to explore and define your passions and aspirations for your career.