Schedule and Locations

The fourth year is where you will consolidate your skills, pursue your specific interests and passions, and begin to develop specific expertise.

Acute Care Psychiatry

Duration: 1 month
Location: Depends on selected site

Call expectations: Weekend and home call.

Residents return to an acute care rotation site of their choosing (inpatient or consult) with goals to develop skills required of an attending psychiatrist. While in this role, residents have the opportunity to lead a teaching team with a junior resident, apply psychotherapy training to acute settings, and develop mastery of acute psychiatric treatments. Residents will also lead a didactic teaching session for other residents and medical students.

Consultant-Liaison Psychiatry

Duration: 1 month
Location: Parkland Hospital

Call expectations: Weekend and home call.

The Consult-Liaison Psychiatry Service is a collaborative and multidisciplinary team that includes attending psychiatrists, attending psychologists, psychiatry second- and fourth-year residents, third-year medical students, and psychology doctoral interns. Residents will provide evaluations, medication recommendations, psycho-education, and psychotherapy under the supervision of an attending psychiatrist. This rotation includes weekly conferences and daily interdisciplinary rounds.

Electives

Duration: 10 months
Location: Depends on electives chosen

Call expectations: Minimal or none.

See our elective listing.

Psychotherapy

Duration: 12 months minimum
Location: UT Southwestern Psychotherapy Clinic

Call expectations: Residents are expected to follow up on patient calls and be available for patient questions, refills, or crises.

The resident will provide a variety of psychotherapeutic approaches in a longitudinal outpatient setting, including cognitive-behavioral therapy, psychodynamic therapy, brief psychotherapy, and supportive psychotherapy. Residents with full licenses may also use combined psychopharmacologic approaches. All trainees will have supervision tailored to the modality chosen for their patient.

What Residents Learn

You will attend a continuous case conference and a selective series of advanced psychiatry seminars, which is revised each year in consultation with the residents. Having covered all of the requirements, the coordinator will provide you with a list of "areas of faculty expertise that you didn't know about," and your class will together design your own syllabus. In addition, you will attend a series of seminars on career direction, job searching, negotiating, leadership, and management; prepare for various career paths; review neurology; and receive an overview of general psychiatry to help you prepare for board exams.

Balance and Diversity

Two months of consultation-liaison psychiatry is required in the fourth year. On the Consult-Liaison Service, you will learn to integrate your knowledge of biopsychosocial medicine by consulting and collaborating with your non-psychiatric physician colleagues in a general hospital.

The remainder of the year involves a broad range of clinical, administrative, teaching, and research electives, including the formal Resident Research Track. Popular electives:

• Forensic psychiatry
• ACT team
• Chemical addictions
• ECT
• Autism Clinic
• Geriatric psychiatry
• Philosophy of Psychiatry and Medical Ethics
• Special topics in Psychiatry, reading elective
• Research opportunities
• Eating Disorders Unit

Opportunities

Psychotherapy cases and supervision continue throughout your fourth year. You will have opportunities to pursue further training in more specialized forms of psychotherapy such as cognitive-behavior therapy, interpersonal therapy, family therapy, and dialectical behavior therapy. You may also elect to begin formal psychoanalytic training at the Dallas Psychoanalytic Center.