Psychiatry Residency Postgraduate Year 2 | NYU Langone Health

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Psychiatry Residency Psychiatry Residency Postgraduate Year 2

Psychiatry Residency Postgraduate Year 2

In postgraduate year 2 (PGY-2) of our program, you both expand and refine your psychiatric skills. Building on a solid foundation developed in the PGY-1 year, PGY-2s learn not only to triage between acute, subacute, and chronic mental illness, but they also build further confidence in their abilities as an autonomous practitioner. You continue to work under close supervision of faculty and senior trainees, and you are supported to take additional responsibility in the care of your patients.

During your PGY-2 year, you become proficient in the assessment of patients in every part of the healthcare delivery system, including the public city and state, private, and federal sectors. You also gain new firsthand exposure to outpatient psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, as well as consultation–liaison psychiatry.

Inpatient Psychiatry Clinical Training for Residents

During PGY-2 year, you rotate through several inpatient psychiatry units for 4 to 8 weeks at a time. Some of these sites are the same as those offered in the PGY-1 year. Returning to these sites as a PGY-2 allows you to hit the ground running as a more experienced clinician. As a PGY-2, you also rotate on more specialized inpatient units, learning more about forensic and child and adolescent psychiatry.

Forensic Psychiatry Clinical Training for Residents

In PGY-2, you have the opportunity to train at Kirby Forensic Psychiatric Center working with patients committed under New York criminal law. You learn about restorative psychiatric care provided to people found incompetent to stand trial. Providers here also serve involuntarily committed civil patients found to be too dangerous for other state facilities. You develop the forensic skills to perform evaluations of these patients for legal purposes. You also learn how to prepare a report for court, addressing commitment, competency, and treatment over objection.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinical Training for Residents

As a PGY-2, you rotate for four weeks on one of the inpatient child or adolescent units at NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue. Every effort is made to accommodate your preference.

Bellevue Child Inpatient Unit

The child inpatient unit at Bellevue, 21 South, is the oldest inpatient child service of its kind in the country. During your rotation, you work with children ages 12 and younger to help them cope with emerging diagnoses such as autism spectrum, psychotic, mood, developmental and attention deficit hyperactivity disorders. The unit has a therapeutic nursery and school program.

Bellevue Adolescent Inpatient Unit

Bellevue’s adolescent inpatient unit provides care to teens with a wide range of psychiatric illness. Here, you serve as the primary clinician as part of an interdisciplinary treatment team. PGY-2s on this rotation co-lead a substance use support group and attend weekly journal club and case conferences. The unit also has a therapeutic school program.

Outpatient Psychiatry Clinical Training for Residents

Outpatient clinical training in the PGY-2 year takes place at two state facilities. On these rotations, faculty with expertise in public psychiatry provide clinical supervision and foster discussion about psychiatric leadership and systems-based care.

South Beach Psychiatric Center

South Beach Psychiatric Center treats approximately 600 patients with severe and persistent mental illness. While on this rotation, you will learn specifics of the intake examination while providing treatment, including medication management and group therapies. Emphasis is placed on learning integrated, cost-effective, and consumer-centered clinical care that prioritizes wellness and recovery. You will spend 6-8 weeks on this rotation.

Manhattan Psychiatric Center

In the PGY-2 year, you also rotate at Manhattan Psychiatric Center (MPC), primarily at its Harlem based 125th Street outpatient clinic, which is dedicated to treating patients with severe and persistent mental illness. Here, you also gain exposure to various community organizations dedicated to sustained recovery. You will spend 6 to 8 weeks on this rotation.

Consultation–Liaison Psychiatry Clinical Training for Residents

As a PGY-2, you spend six weeks on the consultation–liaison psychiatry service at either Bellevue, the VA, or NYU Langone.

NYC Health + Hospitals/Bellevue

During your rotation on the Bellevue consultation–liaison service you join an interdisciplinary team conducting psychiatric consultations for various services, including internal medicine, multiple surgical subspecialties, obstetrics and gynecology, neurology, and rehabilitation medicine. You also work with the Consult for Addiction Treatment and Care in Hospitals (CATCH) program, which initiates and coordinates addiction treatment follow up for hospitalized patients who have substance use disorders.

NYU Langone

During your rotation on NYU Langone’s consultation–liaison service you join an interdisciplinary team offering psychiatric consultations across all inpatient services including internal medicine, multiple surgical subspecialties, obstetrics and gynecology, neurology, and Rusk Rehabilitation. You also have the opportunity to consult on addiction cases with this service.

VA NY Harbor Healthcare System

During your rotation on the VA consultation–liaison service, you join a team of trainees that includes a psychosomatic medicine fellow, pain medicine fellows, postdoctoral psychology fellows, and neurology residents. Key teaching areas covered in this rotation include the evaluation of new-onset neuropsychiatric symptoms in people with medically complex conditions, psychological adjustment to illness and hospitalization, and liaison aspects of working with medical and surgical services. In addition to daily teaching rounds, you participate in weekly consultation–liaison didactics.

Residency Didactic Training and Resident Process Group

In your PGY-2 year, your cohort convenes for six hours of dedicated scholarly and clinician development time on Thursdays.

Three hours are devoted to seminar-style PGY-2 didactics focusing on clinical case material, differential and diagnosis, patient interviewing skills, risk assessment, psychopharmacology, and various subspecialties, such as forensic, child and adolescent, geriatric, addiction, consultation, and community psychiatry. These seminars build on material covered in the PGY-1 year. Additional courses cover dynamic and supportive psychotherapies as well as psychodynamic models of psychological functioning. PGY-2s also meet with faculty researchers to learn about their work and how they can become involved.

Two hours are devoted to residency-wide learning. PGY-2s attend departmental Psychiatry Grand Rounds, which offer cutting edge insights into clinical care and research presented by faculty from NYU Langone and beyond. Residents also have the opportunity to deliver Grand Rounds presentations periodically throughout the year.

PGY-2s join their peers in the PGY-1, 3, and 4 resident classes for an additional hour of shared learning. Together the entire residency gathers for morbidity and mortality conferences, journal club, community meetings, and lecture series focused on career development, race and racism in psychiatry, research skills, and systems of care. This is a time when residents build collegiality and have the opportunity to learn from and with one another across the four classes.

The last hour of dedicated time, on Thursdays, functions as a process group, during which your cohort engages in unstructured group therapy facilitated by trained therapists to learn more about yourself and your peers.

The rest of your Thursday is protected personal scholarly time.

Residency Electives

As a PGY-2, you choose two weeks of elective experiences based on your individual psychiatry interests. Electives focusing on integrative care and the reverse-integration model are also available. Our PGY-1 and PGY-2 electives catalog provides further details.

On-Call Shifts for Residents

In PGY-2 year, you are on call for 2-week blocks at a time for a total of 4 to 6 weeks. During each 2-week block, on-call shifts take place from 4:00PM to 12:00AM for 1 week at Bellevue and 1 week at the VA. You also take weekend call with occasional 24-hour shifts at these two locations. During call shifts in the PGY-2 year, you build on call experience from the PGY-1 year, further developing your confidence as a provider for patients with acute psychiatric needs.