| PHILOSOPHY OF THE UF RESIDENCY TRAINING PROGRAM |
||
|
From
the Residency Purpose, |
The Department of Psychiatry at the University of Florida is committed to achieving excellence in its missions of patient care, teaching, and research. It is the goal of the department to provide a training model that spans laboratory bench to clinical bedside, integrating new findings in basic and clinical neuroscience into the highest quality of care of individuals with psychiatric illness or other illness affected by psychological factors. Psychiatry is a dynamic specialty, requiring an energetic and eclectic program. From the start, psychiatry residents at the University of Florida deal directly with patients and function simultaneously with teams of professionals delivering primary patient care. The resident thus becomes an invaluable member of the health care team, gradually assuming a larger leadership role. Since it is well recognized that one of the most important modes of learning is through teaching, the University of Florida resident is an active teacher and supervisor of the medical students who are rotating through clerkships and electives on the Psychiatry Service. Our program will provide future psychiatrists with the ability to practice successfully by being able to assimilate rapid developments in relevant science and technology, and health care delivery systems. Optimum time is provided in the later years of training for the residents to select areas of sub-specialty concentration to meet their particular interests or career goals. The Department offers specialty training in the areas of eating disorders, forensic psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry, gero-psychiatry, addiction medicine and pain management, clinical or basic research. The overall objective of our training program is to develop highly skilled psychiatrists to fill leadership roles in the various areas of psychiatry. A partial list of such areas includes academic psychiatry, community and public psychiatry, clinical practice, consultation services, forensic psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, substance abuse and addiction medicine, and child psychiatry. Each resident is expected to become proficient in the diagnostic and therapeutic techniques required of competent clinicians, to be skilled in working with, and coordinating the activities of other mental health professionals, and to develop the necessary skills to critically evaluate relevant research findings in the clinical literature. Every attempt is made to provide a core educational experience as well as tailoring specific training to the special needs and interests of the resident. Residents learn how to organize an inpatient service, manage the patients, and work with the treatment team and referral sources. University of Florida’s child, adolescent, adult, geriatric, addictions, and dual disorders units provide ample training opportunities for the Resident to master this important psychiatric work. Competency in all modalities of psychotherapy as part of the outpatient experience allows Residents to learn motivational interviewing, cognitive-behavioral therapy, insight-oriented psychotherapy, supportive therapy, grief and loss counseling, hypnosis, biofeedback and relaxation therapies. Residents obtain competency in the basic, clinical and research science of psychopharmacology. Competency in mono and other pharmaco-therapies for all psychiatric diseases is guaranteed. Supervision by expert and specialty psychopharmacologists is provided. Residents become accomplished in dual disorders and complex patient evaluation and treatment.
|