Curriculum

The first year in residency is focused on helping you learn the basic skills of being a practicing physician, including the requisite medical knowledge and how to work with acutely ill patients while having a wealth of contact with attendings and senior residents. Non-psychiatric rotations include inpatient internal medicine (and/or pediatrics), outpatient internal medicine, emergency medicine, and inpatient, outpatient, and consult neurology. Psychiatry experiences include inpatient adult, inpatient or consult child/adolescent, inpatient forensic, inpatient veterans, and inpatient geriatric rotations.

We have arranged all rotations in an inter-digitated schedule to allow all residents a mix of medicine and psychiatry early on and throughout the year.

On-Call, consisting of short-call and night-float, entails covering the inpatient psychiatric units at MSH and working with the PGY-3 and attending in the psychiatry emergency service.

Our thrice-weekly noon-time didactics program is attended by our residents rotating on both psychiatric and most non-psychiatric services. We believe this promotes greater class cohesion and augments both the personal and educational experiences of the intern year.

PGY-1 residents also attend multiple case conferences and clinical seminars, including a twice-weekly morning report run by senior residents, weekly Formulation Rounds run by the Training Directors, Chair’s Rounds, Grand Rounds, and additional unit and service-specific educational events.

Learn more about the PGY-1 psychiatry resident's weekly schedule

During your second year, you solidify knowledge of inpatient psychiatry, round out clinical experiences in a multitude of settings, develop core outpatient skills for third year independence, and begin considering areas of psychiatry in which to specialize. In our curriculum, we have reduced the number of total inpatient months to 7-8, in keeping with the changing practice of how psychiatric services are provided.

Our PGY-2 residents have a six-month-long, full-time outpatient experience, including substance use and geriatric psychiatry at the Mount Sinai-Behavioral Health Center, focusing on new evaluations, sub-acute stabilization, and training in crisis management and targeted psychopharmacology and psychotherapies. This is augmented by one day per week of outpatient electives at the site of your choosing.

The other six months include rotations on our psychiatric emergency service, inpatient psychiatry units (including training in ECT), consultation-liaison, and partial hospital program.

On-Call is at MSBHC, with an attending present at all times. This experience provides an opportunity for expanded responsibilities and professional growth.

Didactics consists of seven hours of protected time for one day each week.

PGY-2 residents also attend multiple case conferences and clinical seminars, including weekly Formulation Rounds with the Training Directors, Chair’s Rounds, Grand Rounds, and additional unit and service-specific educational events.

The PGY-3 experience continues your immersion in outpatient psychiatry. Formal training and supervision in the overall management and long-term care of outpatients is combined with additional experiences in specialty areas of psychiatry and elective time, allowing for a greater diversity of population, illness, treatment modality, evaluation style, systems-based practice, and supervision. Residents are given the opportunity to select their choice of sites (MSH or MSBHC) for their offices, to meet their individual interests (e.g., community, psychotherapy, substance, etc.).

In addition to providing individual treatment to patients under close supervision in the Resident Training Clinics, residents have the option to work with leading experts in our specialty care clinics (e.g., schizophrenia, treatment-resistant depression, interventional psychiatry, personality disorders, OCD, substance use, geriatric). Residents learn a wide variety of psychopharmacological interventions and receive extensive clinical training in CBT, psychodynamic, and supportive psychotherapies, with supervision by senior psychotherapists, including through Mount Sinai’s formal affiliation with the New York Psychoanalytic Society & Institute. In addition, residents run groups, evaluate and treat children and adolescents, and have the opportunity to work in ambulatory med/surg settings in outpatient consultation-liaison.

PGY-3s have 15% elective time to define and pursue a concentrated focus (i.e., your “major”). Electives may be based in nearly any setting (e.g., clinical, research, teaching, administrative, etc.) and may also include additional psychotherapeutic modalities.

On-Call is in the psychiatric emergency service at MSH, which is staffed by a supervisory attending psychiatrist 24/7.

As in other years, PGY-3 residents are given protected time for their classroom didactic curriculum, representing about six hours for one day per week. This year prioritizes a focus on the different psychotherapies and outpatient psychopharmacology. Residents also attend weekly outpatient Formulation Rounds with the Training Directors.

Mentored training and academic work in individualized area(s) form the core of the fourth year, as residents cultivate developing expertise and readiness for independent psychiatric practice and directed professional growth.

Alongside substantial elective time, residents continue to treat  select outpatients under supervision in a longitudinal manner, advancing their psychotherapeutic and psychopharmacological skills. The fourth year also includes a month in our Partial Hospital Program, in which senior residents run groups, supervise junior residents and non-physician practitioners, and further consolidate their skills.

We believe all residents should develop the teaching ability to become future leaders in psychiatry. To cultivate these skills and to further prepare senior residents for life after residency, each PGY-4 acts as a Junior Teaching Attending assigned to a clinical service of their choice, teaching, advising, mentoring, and supervising PGY-1s and 2s.

There is no On-Call in PGY-4.

As in other years, PGY-4 residents are given protected time for their classroom didactic curriculum, representing several hours one day per week. In addition to learning more nuanced techniques in psychotherapy, advanced psychopharmacology, and translating neuroscience into the clinical realm, the classroom curriculum addresses real-world issues like negotiating for jobs and initiating one’s career post-residency.