Harvard South Shore Psychiatry Residency Training Program

Clinical Rotations

PGY-1

Rotation	Location	Duration
Inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry	McLean Hospital	1 month
Inpatient Substance Abuse Treatment/"Detox"	VA Brockton	1 month
Outpatient Community Medicine	Brockton Neighborhood Health	1 month
Inpatient Adult Acute Psychiatry	VA Brockton	3 months
Clinical Evaluation Center/Admitting Unit	McLean Hospital	1 month
Outpatient Neurology	VA Jamaica Plain	2 months
Inpatient Medicine Consult Service	VA West Roxbury	6 weeks
Inpatient Subacute Rehabilitation Medicine	VA Brockton	6 weeks

PGY-2

Rotation	Location	Duration
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry	VA West Roxbury	2 months
Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry	Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center	1 month
Partial Hospitalization Program	McLean Southeast	1 month
ECT and Inpatient Psychiatry	VA Brockton	1 month
MA Department of Mental Health Psychiatric Hospital	Corrigan Mental Health Center	1 month
Forensic Psychiatry	Taunton State Hospital	1 month
Child and Adolescent Psychiatry	McLean Southeast	2 to 3 months
Adult Inpatient Acute Psychiatry	McLean	1 month
Selective (i.e. Palliative, Child, Residential Substance Abuse, Long-Term Care)	variable	1 month
Night Float	VA Brockton	3 weeks of 5 nights per week
Outpatient Continuity Clinic	VA Brockton, including virtual and telehealth options	1/2 day per week (year-long)

PGY-3

Rotation	Location	Duration
Outpatient General Mental Health (GMH) Clinic	VA Brockton	Year-long four half-days per week
Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Clinic	VA Brockton	Year-long one half-day per week
Department of Mental Health Outpatient Clinic Severe Mental Illness (SMI) Clinic & Partial Hospitalization (PHP) Program	DMH (Fall River)	Year-long one half-day per week
Outpatient Intensive Community Integrative Recovery & Treatment (Severe Mental Illness & Clozapine Clinic)	VA Brockton	Year-long one half-day per week
Outpatient elective (varies)	variable	Year-long one half-day per week
Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program (ADTP) Supervision	VA Brockton	Year-long as needed
Psychodynamic Psychotherapy	VA Brockton	Year-long Supervision
Research Track (optional)	variable	Protected-time 1 day per week (year-long)

PGY-4

PGY-4 year is highly individualized to the needs for each resident. A variety of electives are available. The PGY-4 year can also be structured to allow remote work from any sponsoring VA (in another city or state), or to complete VA-fellowships.

Rotation	Location	Duration
Electives Consultation-Liaison EEG Interpretation Endocrinology Geriatrics Integrative Care Neurology Specialties Neurofeedback Neuroradiology Palliative Care Psychotherapy Electives Rural Mental Health in Colorado Serious Mental Illness Sleep Medicine Substance Abuse Whole Health Quality Improvement Patient Safety College Student Mental Health Collaborative Care Perinatal Addiction Clinic Consultation Telehealth Neuromodulation (ECT, TMS, Ketamine) Remote work at any sponsoring VA in the US Electroconvulsive Therapy Certification Boston Psychoanalytic Society and Institute fellowship VA Advanced Fellowships (can be completed during PGY-4 year)	variable	12 months (including up to 3 months away)
Chief Resident Leadership Program (optional)	variable	2.5 days per week
Continuity Clinic	VA Brockton	Year-long one half-day per week
Research Track (optional)	variable	12 months

Harvard South Shore Psychiatry Residency Training Program | Residents in the program

Site Descriptions

VA Boston is a large healthcare system composed of three campuses, two of which are in Boston and one just outside of Boston. The Brockton campus (BR) is home base for mental health and the HSS program. It houses two acute inpatient psychiatry wards with 52 beds total, two long-term psychiatry units, a residential unit for substance abuse treatment, a sub-acute rehabilitation center, and an inpatient palliative care /hospice unit. Also located on this campus is an active urgent care where residents will conduct admission assessments on-call. The Brockton campus has a large outpatient mental health clinic where residents complete most of their outpatient clinical training. The Jamaica Plain campus (JP) largely consists of outpatient services, including the specialty neurology clinics through which residents rotate (memory, movement disorders, multiple sclerosis, epilepsy, psychogenic nonepileptic seizures, general neurology). Residents complete two other rotations at JP – the Substance Abuse Recovery and Rehabilitation Treatment Program (SARRTP), a 6-week residential program for veterans with substance use disorders, and the PACU where residents get hands-on exposure to ECT and ketamine procedures. Residents have the option to complete some outpatient work at the JP campus. The West Roxbury campus (WX) is the primary medical and surgical hospital for VA Boston and it is here residents get inpatient medicine exposure and later return for consultation-liaison psychiatry, and where our PGY-3s primarily take call with the consultation service.

McLean Hospital is a leader in psychiatric care, research, and education. It is the largest psychiatric teaching hospital of Harvard Medical School, is consistently ranked among the top psychiatric hospitals in the country, and home to the nation’s oldest and globally-renowned research program in a psychiatric hospital setting. McLean Hospital has famously been represented in a variety of literary and film representations of mental health treatment. Our residents rotate at the Belmont campus and the Southeast campus in Middleborough. While at McLean, residents have hands-on exposure to both Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) and Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS), and will complete their 2-3 months of child & adolescent psychiatry training and 1 month of geriatric psychiatry training. Residents will also rotate through the partial hospitalization program, the acute inpatient units, and the admitting unit at McLean Hospital. Residents will work alongside MGH/McLean residents and other HMS-affiliate residents rotating at McLean Hospital.

Brockton Neighborhood Health Center (BNHC) is a primary care community clinic where residents work with underserved patients under the supervision of staff family medicine and internal medicine attendings. The resident may also attend specialty clinics such as endocrinology, HIV, sexually transmitted infection clinic, harm reduction clinic, and will frequently work closely with interpreters to interview patients from various backgrounds with limited English language skills. The resident may also attend nutrition and cooking classes alongside patients in the clinic’s very own teaching kitchen.

Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center (BIDMC) is a Harvard-affiliated teaching hospital located in the Longwood Medical Area of Boston. Serving as a tertiary/academic resource, this site allows residents to gain exposure to an interesting variety of consultation-liaison cases, with a special focus on female and obstetric patients. Residents will rotate alongside other HMS-affiliate residents from BIDMC.

Dr. Solomon Carter Fuller Mental Health Center is a Department of Mental Health (DMH) facility with three forensic psychiatric inpatient units which provide forensic assessments for Massachusetts while providing ongoing psychiatric care.

Corrigan Mental Health Center is a Department of Mental Health (DMH) facility serving a catchment area that includes Fall River, New Bedford, and surrounding towns. Residents rotate on acute inpatient psychiatry as a PGY-2 and have the option of rotating in the outpatient clinic during the PGY-3 year. Inpatient and outpatient settings alike will expose residents to the treatment of severe and persistent mental illness including treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

Brockton Multi-Service Center is a Department of Mental Health (DMH) facility in the Southeastern Area network that serves as a catchment for Brockton and surrounding towns. Residents may complete their PGY-3 outpatient community clinic rotation at BMSC. This outpatient setting will expose residents to the treatment of severe and persistent mental illness including treatment-resistant schizophrenia.

Didactics Full Academic Day (every week)

All residents including those rotating with medicine or neurology are excused from clinical duties on Wednesdays for the full day to focus on didactic curriculum. Our residents benefit from the camaraderie fostered by sharing a protected didactic day, and the didactic day helps to prepare residents for patient encounters in psychiatry, medicine, and on-call. In spring of 2020 we made the transition into an entirely virtual academic day where residents are able to access courses using virtual platforms such as zoom, Webex, and Microsoft teams from the comfort of their homes. Though this change was made to promote safety and physical distancing in the era of COVID-19, this modification has been so well received we plan to continue offering virtual didactics well into the future. To help facilitate remote learning, including best practices for telepsychiatry, all residents have received VA-issued laptops. Topics include psychiatric diagnosis and interviewing, psychopharmacology, ethics, neuropsychiatry, human development, supportive psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), cognitive processing therapy (CPT), motivational interviewing (MI), psychodynamic psychotherapy, diversity and inclusion, consultation-liaison psychiatry, human sexuality, history of psychiatry, careers in psychiatry, leadership development, a weekly PGY1 process group, a resident led morbidity and mortality conference, and many more. We are particularly proud of our outstanding faculty, focus on evidence-based care, and education innovation. Highlights include: psychopharmacology with Dr. David Osser, the founder of the Psychopharmacology Algorithm Project.

Grand Rounds

Grand Rounds Grand Rounds is a twice-monthly lunchtime series where HSS residents have the opportunity to meet nationally renowned experts in Psychiatry. Grand Rounds is built into the Wednesday Academic Day with lunch provided by HSS. As a VA flagship facility, the VA Boston Healthcare system is piloting a project to make Grand Rounds available virtually, with CME, to all VA facilities across the country. Additionally, PGY4 residents have the opportunity to present in grand rounds, teaching to a national audience of psychiatrists.

Journal Club

Journal Club Online forum where residents post and discuss landmark articles in psychiatry. It is a resident-run forum, conducted virtually, and available to any residents who want to attend during any rotation.

Harvard Day

Harvard Day is an event held each autumn that allows Psychiatry residents from all five Harvard residency programs to come together for a day of scholarship. Each year, one of the Harvard residency programs hosts the day and chooses a theme for which they select a keynote speaker and develop various breakout seminars.

DMH Day

The Department of Mental Health (DMH) hosts an event each year for all Massachusetts psychiatry programs to meet and join in a discussion led by an inspiring keynote speaker that is doing important work to push our field forward.

Harvard Mysell Day and HSS Research Day

Harvard Mysell Day and HSS Research Day are held each spring. Harvard Mysell Day allows all Harvard psychiatry residency programs to come together and share their research at a large poster session. A renowned psychiatrist who has dedicated a substantial portion of his/her career to research is asked to come as a keynote speaker. The keynote speaker presents his/her research and shares lunch with the residents for a career planning Q&A.

HSS also holds HSS Research Day each spring, allowing HSS faculty and residents to share their research with each other and cheer on the accomplishments within HSS. The 2020 HSS Research Day was held as a virtual event with posters, short oral presentations and other scholarly presentations presented by residents and faculty. Twenty of our residents presented their research at this fun and successful event.

VA Fellowships

The VA Advanced Fellowship programs provide unique preparation for future leaders in healthcare by providing hands-on mentored educational experiences to develop skills in specific clinical areas and more broadly for healthcare system and healthcare education system transformation through policy, system redesign, and research. Through creative partnerships, use of new technology, and innovative educational modalities, the VA Advanced Fellowships Program promotes and fosters the highest standards of leadership, intellectual integrity, research, and patient care. Harvard South Shore residents may apply to select fellowships as part of the PGY4 elective year or as a post-graduate year. VA Advanced Fellowships include: