Inpatient Psychiatry:  During inpatient training the resident learns basic psychiatric skills: interviewing, diagnostics and patient management.  This happens in the context of learning how to function as a member of a multi-disciplinary team while caring for acutely ill patients.  Close supervision, evidence-based treatment and medical student teaching are all important elements of the inpatient experience.

Consultation Psychiatry:  Bedside teaching complements a broad range of seminars, rounds and teaching conferences, representing the breadth and depth of contemporary psychiatric consultation practice. The Psychiatric Consultation Service provides both clinical and scholarly experiences that interface with psychiatry and medicine.

Psychotherapy:  Psychotherapy training includes a coordinated sequence of clinical experiences and seminars over the four years. First-year residents focus primarily on learning interviewing skills, crisis intervention, and behavioral techniques critical to inpatient and emergency psychiatry. During the following three years, residents receive comprehensive training in the major facets of psychotherapy in an outpatient setting ranging from analytically-oriented to cognitive and  behavioral psychotherapies. Each resident learns the fundamentals of psychotherapy and develops a case load of outpatients who are treated continuously across service assignments.

Child, Adolescent, and Family Psychiatry:  Formal instruction by the staff  of the Center for Children, Youth, and Families begins in the PGY-II year. The pediatric psychopharmacology clinic emphasizes comprehensive training in the assessment and treatment of childhood psychopathology. This clinic integrates the empirically based taxonomy, the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) of Dr. Tom Achenbach with the current diagnostic approach of DSM-IV. This experience is unique in the world. The family assessment work on the inpatient service, experience in the crisis clinic and pediatric consultation on the medical and surgical floors allow interested first- and second-year residents to develop expertise in this area from the start of their training.  You can find the CBCL as well as other ASEBA forms and information at www.aseba.org/index.html

Human Behavioral Pharmacology Lab:  Behavioral pharmacology consists of an active investigative team in our department with federally-funded research and treatment programs in the behavioral-oriented treatment of drug addiction and smoking. The work of Drs. John Hughes, Steve Higgins and others represent state-of-the-art research in the theory of nicotine, opiate, cocaine, marijuana, and alcohol addiction and treatment. This group also offers a funded post-doctoral training program for M.D. and Ph.D. candidates. You can find more information on the HBPL at www.uvm.edu/~hbpl

Public/Community Psychiatry:  The resident has the opportunity to care for the severely and persistently mentally ill and to work in Vermont's innovative and nationally acclaimed mental health system. On-call emergency room activity provides experience in crisis intervention to severely ill patients and in collaborative work with clinicians from the area's mental health centers. All residents rotate at the Vermont State Hospital and the Crisis Services of Chittenden County. During the PGY III year, residents follow community patients with chronic mental illness, longitudinally, in conjunction with the local Community Mental Health Agency. Health services research and additional clinical  assignments are also possible.

Emergency Psychiatry:  In the first year, pertinent seminars provide a practicum in the management of outpatient and hospital emergencies. On-call experiences are supervised by the faculty and reviewed in daily conferences and the weekly Clinical Care Seminar. The full-time rotation in the Crisis Clinic provides intensive clinical and didactic training. Residents may gain further exposure to the emergency care of the chronically mentally ill during the community psychiatry segment. This opportunity includes home visits in collaboration with the emergency outreach team.

Administration:  Psychiatrists often serve as administrators in the health-care field. Consistent with this trend, the training program encourages residents to assume administrative roles throughout residency and beyond. Interested residents are encouraged to serve on the Residency Training Committee where they gain experience in program planning. Residents may arrange administrative experiences in the various services of the Department early in their residency. Electives with the Vermont State Department of Mental Health, whose Medical Director is a department faculty member, may be arranged beginning in the second year.