In an era during which acute and chronically ill patients spend less time on inpatient units and more time in partial hospitals, day hospitals, continuing care programs, and crisis intervention programs, the BIDMC provides in-depth exposure to the range of services available to seriously ill psychiatric patients. During the PGY2 year, residents spend three months on the Deaconess 4 Inpatient Psychiatry service.

For three months, residents are assigned to the consultation-liaison service at BIDMC where they learn the specialized skills of this branch of psychiatry, including differential diagnosis at the medical/psychiatric interface and appropriate psychiatric treatments in the medical milieu. During this time, residents spend two weeks in a geriatric psychiatry experience, which includes outpatient, acute rehabilitation, and nursing home settings.

Additionally, residents spend three months on a partial hospital program at Massachusetts Mental Health Center, and complete their neurology training with one month in out-patient cognitive neurology at Beth Israel. Residents who are likely to enter a Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship may elect instead to complete one month of outpatient child neurology at Boston Children's Hospital.

Finally, residents spend two months on a child psychiatry rotation at Children's Hospital on the Bader Five Inpatient Psychiatry Unit.

In addition to the ongoing didactic program, two other longitudinal experiences begin in the PGY2 year—outpatient psychotherapy and the scholarly project.

Residents begin to see long-term psychotherapy patients and participate in both individual and peer-group supervision and training in psychotherapy. Each resident will develop an outpatient panel of patients at BIDMC and will continue to see outpatients at this site throughout the course of his or her residency. In this way, the resident has the experience of following patients over a relatively long period of time with the opportunity to learn long-term treatments where appropriate and to observe the course of the spectrum of psychiatric disorders. During the PGY2 year, residents spend three to five hours each week at their outpatient sites.

The scholarly project program is a half-day per week during the PGY2 through PGY4 year that is protected for the resident to begin to develop individual scholarship and clinical expertise in an area of interest of the resident’s choice.


Residents, medical students, and attendings having fun during a solar eclipse.