Undergraduate Education

The goal of undergraduate psychiatric education is to assist students in acquiring an understanding of and an appreciation for the application of behavioral and psychiatric principles in patient care and health maintenance through an exposure to a progressive sequence of intellectual stimulations, clinical experiences and appropriate professional socialization within the interdisciplinary framework of the new curriculum.

More specifically, the curriculum aims to assist the student in: 1) acquiring a foundation of knowledge regarding the biological, psychological, sociological and humanistic aspects of the practice of medicine; 2) mastering basic interpersonal and psychiatric skills relevant to the management of patients with medical and/or emotional illness; and 3) emulating attitudes and values that enhance the professional roles and practices of a physician.

Undergraduate Medical Program

First Year
Psychiatry faculty teach in Blocks II, V and VI of the freshman curriculum.

Human Behavior: The Department of Psychiatry takes the lead in teaching the Human Behavior block, which integrates information about human behavior from the biological, behavioral and social sciences as it applies to health, illness and treatment across the life span in our multicultural environment. The block introduces the important biopsychosocial framework, stressing the interacting influences of neurobiological, psychological and sociocultural factors on human behavior, illness and physician-patient interactions. The block is made up of lectures, small group sessions, demonstration/discussion periods and problem-based learning (PBL) groups. Psychiatry faculty contribute heavily to instruction and also serve as small group leaders in the Introduction to Clinical Practice Course.


Second Year
Psychopathology: This area of study is now taught as part of the Neuroscience module of the Pathophysiology and Therapeutics course in the second year and through additional interdisciplinary teaching in other relevant systems (e.g., cardiovascular, endocrine, etc.) within the new curriculum. The module is designed to provide students with the basic concepts of pathophysiological and therapeutic interventions relevant to the neurosciences. This contains the core areas of clinical psychiatry, including psychopathology and the psychiatric treatment of mental disorders. The module seeks to foster an integrative approach to teaching by combining the knowledge and skills of faculty from the department's of Psychiatry, Neurology, Pharmacology, Pathology, Epidemiology & Preventive Medicine, Neurosurgery and Anesthesiolgy. The course format is based on lectures, audiovisual demonstrations (videotapes, live simulcast clinical interviews) small group discussions, problem-solving sessions and assigned readings for self-study.


Psychiatric Interviewing/Mental Status Examination: This component is part of the second-year Introduction to Clinical Practice (ICP) course which is devoted to specialty physical diagnosis and examination. The psychiatric course is devoted to psychiatric interviewing, history taking and the mental status examination. A general introductory lecture is followed by a series of two four-hour small group sessions where each student performs a live psychiatric interview, observes fellow students performing interviews, and reviews interviewing techniques and psychopathologic concepts with the small group preceptor. Attempts are made to expose the students to patients with psychotic, affective and addictive disorders in their small groups of four to five students.


Third Year
Junior Psychiatry Clerkship (four weeks): The junior year provides the main clinical psychiatric experience for University of Maryland medical students. The psychiatry clerkship is now offered in collaboration with the Department of Neurology's clerkship in a required, combined eight-week experience in the junior year. This combined course still provides the student with a core psychiatric experience in addition to providing some integrative experiences with neurology.

The core four-week psychiatry experience combines acute inpatient, outpatient, consultation, addiction and emergency psychiatry assignments in which the student is exposed to an array of psychopathologies in a variety of treatment settings. Pharmacologic, psychotherapeutic, biological and psychosocial treatment modalities are utilized.

Students work under the preceptorship of a psychiatry attending and resident while assigned to the inpatient services. Four hospitals are utilized for these assignments. They include the University Hospital, the Baltimore VA Medical Center, the Walter P. Carter Center and Spring Grove Hospital. Students are assigned approximately three patients from the inpatient team and serve as their primary medical manager under the direction of the resident and attending psychiatrist. This responsibility and involvement with patients provides an ideal setting in which the student may apply the biopsychosocial concepts learned in the first-year behavioral social sciences course with the concepts of psychopathology and clinical skills of psychiatric interviewing, history taking and mental status examination acquired in the second-year courses. The student assumes an integral role on the multidisciplinary team and ward milieu.

Students are also given clinical exposure to patients with psychiatric or behavioral problems in a variety of other treatment settings. These are generally comprised of two four-hour per week assignments with psychiatric faculty in outpatient and consultation settings. Current assignments include a university consultation-liaison service, an urgent care walk-in clinic, an addiction consultation service, a primary care clinic, community mental health clinics, a geriatric psychiatry clinic, a child psychiatry clinic and a partial-hospitalization program.

The scope of seminars includes the following: review of psychopathology, childhood behavioral disorders, addiction psychiatry and psychopharmacology, as well as a clinical case conference focusing on interviewing, diagnostic and treatment skills. In addition, there is a monthly combined case conference with specially selected patients with neuropsychiatric illnesses. Faculty from both neurology and psychiatry attend this conference.

Students are assigned night-call with a psychiatric resident and additionally are precepted in the psychiatric emergency service as part of their rotation. Other opportunities for educational enrichment include a precepted experiential visit to a community 12-step program (e.g.; AA, NA) and observating electroconvulsive therapy. Evaluation is based upon individual preceptor evaluations (2/3) and a national board multiple-choice examination (1/3).

Electives
The Department of Psychiatry offers elective courses in all four years of the medical school curriculum. Elective courses offered in the senior year are numerous and include in-depth psychiatric experiences in inpatient, community psychiatry, emergency psychiatry, forensic psychiatry, child psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, substance abuse, consultation/liaison psychiatry and research electives.

Combined Accelerated Program in Psychiatry (CAPP): This elective track has become nationally visible for its success in engaging students in psychiatry through an advanced four-year curriculum that begins in the freshman year. The program has continued to admit 12 freshman students each year. From the first month of the freshman year, the track provides an unfolding progression of combined small group seminars and clinical experiences in the behavioral sciences and clinical psychiatry.

Other Educational Opportunities

 

 

 

 

 

 
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