Clinical training and practice exams

The first year offers clinical experience in a variety of fields necessary for the practice of psychiatry and is based in a variety of medical specialty and primary care settings, including psychiatry. The second year's emphasis is on strengthening your identity as a developing psychiatrist and is based primarily in the inpatient psychiatric setting with some elective outpatient experiences introducing the breadth of our field.

In the course of the first two years, you also begin working with individual long-term psychotherapy patients, providing a welcome shift in perspective from the inpatient services.

The third year is dedicated to the development of an outpatient practice. You’re primarily responsible for a patient panel that spans the spectrum of psychiatric illness in a community-based clinic that includes outpatients presenting for the first time, as well as complex patients who have come to Mayo Clinic seeking a subspecialty opinion.

The structure of the fourth year provides a dynamic balance between elective flexibility and the opportunity to integrate all that you’ve learned. You’ll return to the inpatient and consultation services in a junior attending role with responsibility for treatment team leadership and education. Additionally, you’re encouraged to use elective time to refine your skills and increase your exposure to self-selected areas.

Teaching opportunities

You’ll have the opportunity to teach Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine students and visiting students from other medical schools through bedside instruction as well as formal didactic lectures. Senior residents are integrally involved in the growth of their junior colleagues, both formally and informally.

Resident responsibilities

Although there are no private inpatients at Mayo Clinic, there are teaching and non-teaching services on the inpatient units. The non-teaching teams have emerged as a reflection of the program's commitment to maintain an appropriate balance between service and education for the residents. Every teaching-service psychiatric patient is assigned to a team typically consisting of one attending psychiatrist, one or two junior residents, registered nurses, a pharmacist, and a social worker.

Junior residents care for five to seven patients on each inpatient service. They’re also responsible for supervising and teaching medical students from Mayo Clinic Alix School of Medicine or visiting medical students who are assigned to the psychiatric services. A senior psychiatric resident may also be on service in a leadership role (senior resident associate).

Evaluation

To ensure adequate acquisition of knowledge and development of technical skills, your performance is continuously assessed via:

• Regular, individualized faculty feedback based on direct observation
• Annual peer evaluations
• Semi-annual reviews with program directors to review ACGME Milestones scores and development as a psychiatrist
• Annual participation in the PRITE
• Simulation center and clinical practice opportunities to complete Clinical Skills Verification Examinations modeled after Part II of the ABPN certifying exam
• Regular evaluations of both faculty and curriculum (via anonymous formal web-based evaluations, regular meetings with the program director, and the annual program evaluation)