PGY-II Overview
Clinical work during the PGY-II year focuses on evaluation, diagnosis and treatment of psychiatric patients in acute settings.
PGY-II residents rotate through the Personality Disorders Inpatient Service at Payne Whitney Westchester, the Schizophrenia Research Unit of Payne Whitney Westchester, the Inpatient Service at Payne Whitney Manhattan 11S (Dual Diagnosis and Affective Disorders inpatient services), and the Neuropsychiatry (11N) Inpatient Service of Payne Whitney Manhattan. Residents may also elect to follow adolescent patients on the Payne Whitney Manhattan Adolescent Inpatient Service. During inpatient rotations, residents will be trained in the administration of ECT. They will also deepen their understanding of hospital psychiatry including the multi-disciplinary approach to patient care, management of the milieu, psychopharmacology, and individual, family and group psychotherapy. While working on the Personality Disorders Inpatient Service, residents will spend one afternoon/week seeing patients under supervision at a community service site.
PGY-II residents also rotate through the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Psychiatric Emergency Service and the NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital Consultation/Liaison Psychiatry Service. In the Emergency Department, residents work with patients requiring acute medical and psychiatric evaluation and treatment. On the Consultation-Liaison Service, residents learn evaluation and management of psychiatric aspects of medical illness while providing liaison and consultation to medical services in the hospital. Some of the Consultation-Liaison time will be spent at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center.
PGY-II residents have 3-5 weeks of elective time during the year when each resident may choose to pursue a clinical or research project of special interest. This time is also available to explore opportunities in child psychiatry. Many residents have chosen to pursue electives in clinical or research work overseas. Mentorship is provided to help residents use elective time most effectively.
PGY-II residents work nights on a rotating basis covering emergencies in the Payne Whitney Clinic inpatients services. These on-call duties are supervised by the PGY-III, PGY-IV and the attending on call. As in the PGY-I year, PGY-II residents on all clinical services are supervised by the attending faculty and senior residents on these services as well as by specially selected PGY-II supervisors. PGY-II residents are, in turn, active in teaching PGY-I residents, medical students clerks and sub-interns.
Toward the second half of the PGY-II year, each resident will begin to pick up outpatients whom he/she will follow throughout the residency. Most often these patients will be selected to be suitable for long-term psychodynamic psychotherapy for which supervision will be provided.
In addition to the site-based curriculum on each clinical service, the PGY-II year includes an intensive 3-hour/week didactic seminar program scheduled during "protected" time. PGY-II summer curriculum includes: management of medical and psychiatric emergencies including suicide, violence and acute psychosis and the fundamentals of C/L psychiatry. The PGY-II curriculum for the remainder of the year includes: the fundamentals of biological psychiatry and psychopharmacology, the fundamentals of neuropsychiatry, psychopathology, introduction to psychotherapy, the psychoanalytic model of the mind, psychiatric and psychological case formulation, cross-cultural psychiatry, and research literacy.
Every PGY-II resident is assigned a research/scholarship mentor for help getting started in independent scholarly investigation.
On every rotation, PGY-II residents participate in the teaching of medical students rotating through psychiatry.
All PGY-II residents participate in a weekly e-group which provides an opportunity to learn about group process and to discuss the process of learning to be a psychiatrist.