Introduction

Welcome to the University of Washington Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences! We are pleased that you are interested in our psychiatry residency program. Our goal is to provide our residents with excellent and balanced training, preparing them for careers in academic, community, and clinical settings.

We feel that our Department offers a rich and stimulating training environment. Residents learn the fundamental skills of clinical psychiatry through rotations at the University of Washington Medical Center, Harborview Medical Center, the Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and Children’s Hospital and Regional Medical Center. Each of these sites offers a unique patient population and distinct clinical opportunities. Clinical supervision and didactic instruction are provided by our teaching faculty, which includes internationally known investigators with a wide range of clinical and research interests. We seek to foster in our faculty and in our trainees a commitment to lifelong learning, compassionate patient care, and a strong sense of professional responsibility and integrity.

While providing residents excellent and broad-based clinical training, we also wish to help them explore their own interests within psychiatry. Our Department is committed to the care of the disadvantaged and underserved. We offer a wealth of elective opportunities in Community Psychiatry, in the public sector, in working with diverse cultural groups, and in smaller or rural communities through our regional programs in Spokane and Idaho, and rotations in Alaska, Montana, and Wyoming. We feel that psychiatrists are and will be increasingly called upon to work at the interface of psychiatry and the rest of medicine, consulting in primary care settings. For this reason, our program emphasizes consultation-liaison psychiatry. Our faculty and residents work side by side with other specialists in our General Internal Medicine, Family Medicine, Women’s, Geriatrics, Diabetes, International, and Cancer Center clinics and we have a strong Health Services Research program. The Department also offers training through our extensive and well-funded clinical and basic Neuroscience Research programs. After completing our core psychotherapy curriculum, residents may pursue advanced training in a variety of specific forms of psychotherapy. Finally, the Department offers accredited advanced subspecialty residencies in Addictions, Geriatrics, Child and Adolescent Psychiatry, Psychosomatic Medicine, and Forensics, as well as fellowships in Psychiatric Neuroscience, Primary Care Psychiatry, Geriatric Health Services, and Community Psychiatry.

I hope that you will visit us and that we will have the opportunity to introduce you to our residents, faculty, and the training program.

Richard C. Veith, M.D.
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences

Thank you for your interest in our program! The University of Washington Psychiatry Residency Program is fully accredited as both a four-year program, and for three years of training for those residents entering at the PGY-2 level after completing an internship elsewhere. We provide excellent clinical training on inpatient, outpatient, emergency, consultation-liaison, addictions, geriatrics, and child and adolescent services, as well as in a variety of specialized and elective settings.

The major emphasis of the program is on providing a balanced training experience. We aim to teach our residents biological, psychological, and sociocultural aspects of psychiatry, and provide training in both somatic and psychotherapeutic treatment modalities. In addition, we strive for an integrated approach, emphasizing the “science” of psychiatry (i.e. the acquisition of essential knowledge and techniques), the “art” of empathic understanding of patients, and the development of each resident as an ethical, thoughtful, and professional psychiatrist.

We are pleased to have an outstanding group of residents and faculty. Because of the diverse interests of our faculty and the many areas of strength within the department, we are interested in and attract residents with a wide variety of backgrounds and interests within psychiatry. We strive to provide a stimulating and flexible learning environment, in which residents can tailor their experience to explore their individual interests. The Department is relaxed and friendly, while also being committed to excellence in patient care, teaching, and research. Residents are actively involved in residency governance and we take their input very seriously in constantly improving the program.

This web site is intended to give you a brief overview of the program, including the clinical sites, curriculum, special opportunities, the resident group, and living in the Northwest. If you have further questions, please feel free to call or e-mail me. I look forward to hearing from you!