Education/Curriculum

Over the course of the first three years of residency, you can expect to rotate through a broad range of inpatient and outpatient settings.

Internship: During the 18 month internship, residents will alternate every three months between internal medicine and psychiatry rotations. Interns will also start an internal medicine continuity clinic where they will grow their panel of patients over the course of the residency.

Years 2&3: Residents continue to alternate every three months and can begin to customize their rotations towards their clinical interests. In addition to internal medicine clinic, residents will also begin to see psychiatric patients in an outpatient setting. A combined internal medicine/psychiatry clinic at the VA is being created and will open in Spring 2012.  

Year 4: Residents will spend the first six months of their fourth year doing internal medicine rotations. The second half of the year residents will begin 12 continuous months of psychotherapy which will continue into the fifth year of training. The psychotherapy year also includes six months of outpatient child psychiatry and six months of psychiatry at Charleston Mental Health.

Year 5: After concluding the year of psychotherapy, residents will finish their training with six months of internal medicine rotations.

Didactics

Internal medicine didactics include morning report three days a week, weekly grand rounds, and daily noon conferences. Residents attend these lectures while on internal medicine rotations.

Every other month, there is a Med/Psych update which is given by a med/psych attending or resident during internal medicine noon conference to educate our internal medicine colleagues on topics such as delirium, decision making capacity, alcohol withdrawal, depression, and dementia.

Psychiatry didactics include weekly lectures during the first two years, and weekly discussion during the year of psychotherapy. Topics include pharmacology, mood disorders, and becoming a therapist.

Med/psych residents also attend a monthly med/psych journal club where peer-reviewed articles at the interface of internal medicine and psychiatry are discussed and applied to clinical care.

Electives

In addition to general internal medicine and psychiatry rotations, med/psych residents have opportunities to take additional rotations based on their interests. These include: Electroconvulsive Therapy/Brain stimulation lab, Forensics. Residents also have the opportunity to do a month of research and to create their own electives if they have a special interest. Residents also have opportunities to volunteer in outreach clinics such as Crisis Ministries, C.A.R.E.S., Harvest Free Clinic, and Barrier Islands Medical Clinic.

Research

As part of the internal medicine curriculum, all residents are expected to participate in scholarly activity, which includes a Quality Improvement project. This is started during the second year of residency and average duration is one year. However, residents can elect to continue working on their project and implementing policy changes at MUSC. Residents also have the option of doing a research elective month to spend additional time developing their research skills.

At the beginning of residency, residents are paired with a longitudinal mentor

Program overview