The UW Psychiatry residency program offers protected didactics one half-day per week on Thursdays. Didactics are grouped into modules that span across four years and are updated yearly by an appointed faculty member. Residents have an opportunity to provide feedback on their didactics through weekly evaluations that are sent to didactic presenters, module leaders, and residents on the curriculum committee. Evaluations give an opportunity to comment on the content of the didactic, the learning strategies used by the presenter, and how well the presenter includes EDI-related content and creates an inclusive learning environment. Starting July 2024, didactics will be held at the new Center for Behavioral Health and Learning located on the University of Washington Medical Center Northwest Campus.
Residents also attend weekly Departmental Grand Rounds on Fridays during the academic year, site-based journal clubs and resident-led educational activities at each hospital site during R1 and R2 years, psychotherapy seminars at each continuity clinic site during R2 and R3 years, and a 6-month seminar on countertransference during R3 year called Clinical Interactions Seminar.
R4s are given an opportunity to teach the R1s and R2s at Harborview Medical Center Noon Conference. The Teacher Scholar Pathway also offers interested residents the opportunity to engage in educational activities within psychiatry and other disciplines.
Didactic Modules
- Addiction Psychiatry – includes teaching on substance use disorders, addiction psychopharmacology, emerging treatments (e.g. psychedelics for addictions), dual diagnosis, motivational interviewing and 12-step facilitation
- Child & Adolescent Psychiatry – includes typical development, disorders of childhood and adolescence, how to talk to children and adolescents, use of medication with children and adolescents
- Community Psychiatry – includes the recovery model, community mental health systems, caring for unhoused populations, social justice
- Consult-Liaison Psychiatry – includes advanced teaching on delirium, decisional capacity, psycho-oncology, somatic symptoms disorders, transplant psychiatry
- Diagnosis & Psychopathology – includes introductory and advanced teaching on diagnosis of the major DSM-V disorders
- Equity, Diversity, & Inclusion – includes structural competency, social determinants of mental health, bias in the clinical encounter, the Cultural Formulation Interview, LGBTQ series, religion & psychiatry, ableism, the history of racism and sexism in psychiatry, cultural psychiatry, global mental health
- Education – includes educational theory and specific teaching on how to teach medical students, how to give effective talks, how to lead small groups, how to educate patients and families
- Emergency Psychiatry – includes medical management of ideation, dispositions from the psychiatry ER, evaluating suicidal ideation in emergency settings, involuntary treatment, acute intoxication and withdrawal, and cultural competency in the ER
- Forensic Psychiatry – includes correctional psychiatry, law for psychiatrists, duty to protect and duty to warn, right to treatment/refusal, mental health evaluations in criminal and civil law, sex offenders, malingering
- Geriatric Psychiatry – includes evaluation of neurocognitive disorders, psychopharmacology in older adults, late life psychiatric disorders, placement and legal issues, careers in geriatric psychiatry
- Neuroscience & Neuropsychiatry – includes the neurobiology of major psychiatric disorders, neuroanatomy, functions of major brain systems, imaging, neuropsychiatric testing, neurology board review
- Physician Development – includes career development, wellness, professional milestones, preparation for practice, ethics
- Psychopharmacology – includes teaching on classes of medications, medications for specific diagnoses, how to consult the evidence base, neuromodulation, emerging treatments, advanced journal club
- Psychotherapy – includes therapeutic interviewing, working with families, supportive psychotherapy, psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, acceptance and commitment therapy, dialectical behavioral therapy, interpersonal therapy, advanced psychodynamic seminar, group therapy, couples & family therapy
- R1 Survival Didactics – includes psychiatric interviewing, biopsychosocial formulation, note writing, basic inpatient psychopharmacology, safety evaluation, verbal de-escalation skills
- Reproductive Mental Health – includes perinatal psychiatry, perinatal psychopharmacology, infertility and personal loss, intimate partner violence, women’s mental health across the lifespan
- Systems-Based Psychiatry – includes healthcare financing, integrated care, quality improvement/patient safety, measurement-based care