Third Year Clerkships
Psychiatry
4 weeks
- Clerkship Director: Mike Marcangelo, MD, Director of Medical Student Education
- Clerkship Director: Deborah Spitz, MD, Education Mission Director and Director of Residency Training | (773) 834-0294 | dspitz@bsd.uchicago.edu
- Clerkship Coordinator: Brandy Tyrpin | 773-834-0373 | btyrpin@yoda.bsd.uchicago.edu
- Website: http://psychclerk.bsd.uchicago.edu
Description
The psychiatry clerkship is a four-week experience. It has both an inpatient and outpatient component, the proportion of which varies by the primary site assignment. Four different clinical sites are used for the training of medical students during the clerkship. At all sites, students learn from and work with University of Chicago faculty Attending physicians and residents or fellows. In addition to the primary assignments described below, all students have longitudinal exposure to psychiatry outpatient clinics and on-call experiences in emergency and consultation/liaison psychiatry at The University of Chicago Hospitals, and all students rotate through The University of Chicago electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) service located at Mercy Hospital.
The Clerkship Sites
- University of Chicago Medical Center (UCMC)—Primary assignment on the adult consultation-liaison (CL) psychiatry service that provides assessment and consultation to patients and physicians on UCMC medical, surgical and subspecialty units.
- Tinley Park Hospital—Primary assignment on an adult inpatient psychiatry unit. This is a State of Illinois-operated hospital for the mentally ill, and thus most patients on the unit have major chronic mental illness and many have co-morbid substance abuse as well.
- Chicago Lakeshore Hospital (CLH)—Primary assignment on one of two units: 1) adult chemical dependency psychiatry unit that serves patients with dual diagnoses (e.g., Substance Dependence and co-morbid psychiatric illness) as well as some patients with primary psychiatric diagnoses; 2) child and adolescent inpatient psychiatry unit staffed by UofC fellows in Child and Adolescent psychiatry. CLH is a freestanding, for-profit psychiatric hospital.
- Mercy Hospital—Primary assignment on the adult inpatient general psychiatry unit, which serves patients with chronic and acute psychiatric disorders as well as co-morbid medical, neurological and/or substance abuse issues. ECT is performed at Mercy hospital by UofC physicians three days per week.
- University of Chicago outpatient clinics—students are assigned to one or two weekly outpatient clinics, including the general adult psychiatry clinics, the child clinics, the anxiety disorders clinic, and other outpatient clinics serving patients who are relatively stable, employed and highly functional.
Objectives
The goal of the clerkship is to impart basic psychiatric skills and a fund of knowledge that will provide students with the tools necessary to detect and manage common mental disorders as future physicians. Broad areas of skills include interviewing techniques, including history-taking and mental status examination of psychiatric symptoms and signs; development of psychiatric differential diagnoses and a biopsychosocial formulation of patients’ psychiatric illness; formulation of psychiatric treatment options, including pharmacotherapy and psychotherapy. The fund of knowledge students must acquire includes the epidemiology, phenomenology, pathophysiology, treatment, and course of psychiatric disorders. At the end of the rotation, mastery of these skills and areas of knowledge is assessed through written evaluations by faculty and residents of the student’s clinical performance during the clerkship, by a NBME “shelf” subject examination, and by an oral examination of student’s diagnostic / formulation and presentation skills. More information can be obtained at our website.
Evaluation of Clinical Clerks
- 60% Clinical Performance
- 30% NBME Subject Exam
- 10% Oral Exam
Required Textbook—to be announced
The following texts have been used in prior years:
- Gelder et al, Shorter Oxford Textbook of Psychiatry, 5th edition, Oxford University Press, 200
- Kaplan and Sadock’s Synopsis of Psychiatry:Behavioral Sciences / Clinical Psychiatry, 9th edition (Editors: Benjamin J. Sadock and Virginia A. Sadock), Lippincott Williams & Wilkins, 2003