The following activities round out our clinical and educational program and include some examples of departmental social activities as well:
Grand Rounds
All Weill Cornell Medicine, Psychiatry residents participate in weekly psychiatric Grand Rounds at both NewYork-Presbyterian/Weill Cornell and the NewYork-Presbyterian/Westchester Division.
A sample of the planned speakers and topics for the 2018-2019 academic year include:
Mark S. George, M.D. (Director, Brain Stimulation Laboratory, University of South Carolina): New Advances with TMS for Treating Depression
Christof Koch, Ph.D. (Allen Institute for Brain Science): Big Science, Team Science, and Open Science in the Service of Brain Science
Mark Olfson, M.D., M.P.H. (Columbia Univ, NYSPI): Clinical Opportunities for Suicide Prevention
Deborah Weisbrot, M.D. (Stony Brook): Is the Next School Shooter Sitting Before Me? Threat Assessment in Children and Adolescents
Highlights of Grand Rounds from the 2017-2018 academic year include:
Lee S. Cohen, M.D. (Massachusetts General Hospital): Mood Disorders During Pregnancy and the Postpartum Period: Lessons Learned over Two Decades
John G. Gunderson, M.D. (McLean Hospital): Comparing Theories for BPD
Kay R. Jamison, Ph.D. (Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine): Healing the Mind: Writing Takes the Ache Away
Hillary V. Kunins, M.D., M.P.H. (Assistant Commissioner, New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene Bureau of Alcohol and Drug Use): Opioid Epidemic in NYC and Public Health Response
Clinical Scholars Institute (CSI)
The CSI is a novel educational program designed to foster career development and improve clinical scholarship among all residents. The goal is to immerse residents in research, clinical scholarship, academics, goal-setting, and mentoring, in order to synthesize clinicians’ expertise with researchers’ acumen. All residents participate in didactics, group mentorship, writing seminars and career days, as part of a concerted effort to train well-informed academic psychiatrists.
To read more about this program, please click here.
Writing Seminar
As part of the Clinical Scholars Institute, all residents to participate in the scholarly writing seminar, a monthly meeting where residents and selected faculty meet to discuss ideas and review drafts of manuscripts. Since the program's inception in 2013, this seminar has led to over 100 publications in peer-reviewed journals, a majority of which have been co-authored by our trainees.
Disorder of the Quarter (DOQ)
This joint educational and quality initiative was developed for faculty and trainees across disciplines to promote evidence-based practice and to encourage clinicians to reflect on current clinical practices and implement change. This program covers a given major psychiatric disorder over a three-month period, with educational activities on all services, in Grand Rounds, and in other departmental conferences.
Previous DOQ topics include reproductive mood disorders, bipolar disorder, alcohol withdrawal, pediatric OCD, and psychosocial aspects of mental health care in the elderly.
Morbidity and Mortality Conference
In this monthly case conference, we identify a case with particular difficulty or adverse outcome, often related to the Disorder of the Quarter topic. The case is presented by a resident and discussed by a faculty speaker, with lots of time devoted to dialogue among all residents and faculty. The format is collegial, designed to improve our clinical practice and our own experiences in caring for some of our most complex patients.
Journal Club
This monthly meeting is an opportunity for all psychiatry residents to come together with our senior faculty to discuss the current issue of The American Journal of Psychiatry. During this meeting, articles are discussed in a casual manner, with open dialogue about recent research in our field. Conversations often focus of the design on the study and the implications of these findings for our clinical practice.
Weekly Resident Lunch
Our department provides weekly lunch for all psychiatry residents, and sometimes for hungry faculty members. During the hour, we sponsor varied activities, and most topics are chosen by residents and the Education team. Sometimes we offer special didactic events such as our popular formulation bootcamp, or the Clinical Scholars Institute’s Annual Kick-Off. Several times annually, we sponsor our “Continuing the Conversation” series of small-group discussions of residents and faculty about physician wellness and mental health. Sometimes, special guests are invited to discuss careers or topics of interest (recent talks have included psychoanalytic training in NYC, emerging drugs of abuse, financial planning for MDs, sports psychiatry and the role of ketamine in treatment-resistant depression). We also use the time for regular check-ins with the Residency Director and/or chief residents, and/or just to have a “camaraderie hour,” when residents across all four classes have a chance to visit and catch up. As a perk of living in NYC, each week a different cuisine is served!
Career Day
Each year, a selection of speakers are invited to present at our annual half-day, residency-wide meeting, where they are given the opportunity to discuss their career choices and their individual path towards this career. Each year, speakers share aspects of their unique careers, while also allowing for ample time for questions from residents.
The DeWitt Wallace Institute for the History of Psychiatry
All residents have the opportunity to be involved in History of Psychiatry research through the DeWitt Wallace Institute, sponsored by the Department of Psychiatry of Weill Cornell Medicine and NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital. The goal of this institute is to encourage and aid residents and faculty to participate in scholarship in a variety of historical topics relevant to the present-day theory and practice of psychiatry. To learn more about this institute, and its associated Richardson History of Psychiatry Research Seminar series and Oskar Diethelm Library, please click here.
Narrative Medicine Seminar
This is a monthly seminar in narrative medicine that is open to all psychiatry residents and junior faculty. The focus of this seminar is on the reading and writing of short texts, both fiction and non-fiction. The goal is to foster critical reading, writing, and editing within the broader context of patient care and the physician’s experience of that care.
Medical Student Teaching
Psychiatric residents in all four years of training participate in formal didactic and informal clinical teaching of medical students. The psychiatry clerkship is consistently rated one of the favorite clerkships by Weill Cornell medical students, in large part due to the teaching skills of our gifted residents.
Residency Council
The residency council attends to the social well-being of house staff and faculty alike, coordinating weekly lunches and lectures, happy hours, the famous resident picnic, and our annual resident-faculty holiday show. These residents do a great job of ensuring camaraderie amongst all residency classes.
Additional Opportunities
In addition to thee activities listed above, our residents are invited to participate in educational activities held throughout our campus and its neighboring institutions. Activities include but are not limited to:
Personality disorders service research meeting with Otto F. Kernberg, M.D
The Sackler Institute (developmental cognitive neuroscience) study group and Rockefeller University seminar for developmental neurobiology
Specialized case conferences in family therapy, sleep-wake disorders, human sexuality, neuropsychiatry and forensic psychiatry
Grand rounds in the Behavioral Sciences at Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center
Scientific meetings of the Association for Psychoanalytic Medicine and the New York Psychoanalytic Institute
Local and national activities of the American Psychiatric Association
Meetings of many national psychiatric organizations, with participation often funded
Weill Cornell Medicine Wellness Qlinic (a student-run mental health clinic focused on providing accessible mental health care to LGBTQ-identifying patients and providing opportunities for medical students to gain early exposure to psychiatric medical care for an underserved population)
NYP Housestaff Quality Council, which allows housestaff to participate in quality and patient safety initiatives and to work directly with leaders of the Department of Quality and Patient Safety
Resident Forum, a monthly meeting offering housestaff the opportunity to discuss particular aspects of their clinical learning environment with other residents, in order to exchange information and troubleshoot concerns
