Adult Psychiatry Residency (Research track)

The psychiatry residency at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center is a 4 year Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) accredited program, which was founded in 1968. It has trained a generation of psychiatrists now practicing throughout the United States in the private and public sectors, in both academic and nonacademic careers. The Department of Psychiatry's abiding commitment to high standards for patient care, teaching, and research has garnered the training program a national reputation for training outstanding clinicians, and also researchers.

Mission

To prepare the next generation of psychiatrists for excellence in clinical practice, scholarship, education, and leadership, recognizing the central importance of advocacy and equity as well as the evolving nature of neuroscience and psychiatric research.

Program aims

• Educate residents to be excellent practitioners in psychiatry with regards to diagnostic assessments, patient care, psychopharmacology, neuroscience, interventional psychiatry and psychotherapy modalities.
• Expose residents to various systems of care (tertiary medical center, community mental health centers, Veteran’s Affairs Medical Center, state hospital, nursing home, jail, etc.) in resource limited areas; how psychiatric treatment is delivered in those settings; and the role of the psychiatrist.
• Prepare residents for leadership roles in the field of psychiatry, recognizing the importance of diversity, equity, and inclusion in clinical care and in the workplace.
• Program Highlights
• Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center prides itself on its collaborative and collegiate environment. Our faculty are both highly distinguished and accessible to trainees, with informal, personalized, one-to-one instruction readily available to all our residents. Our Residents get in-depth exposure to tertiary and community care, advanced neuroscience, interventional psychiatry, psychotherapy, specialty clinics, and more. Teaching medical students, scholarship and mentorship are also plentiful.
• We offer a 5-year combined adult and child program, and a research track. Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center is home to several post-residency fellowships, including child psychiatry, consultation-liaison psychiatry, geriatric psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, sleep medicine and pain medicine, as well as the Leadership Preventive Medicine Residency (LPMR), a popular choice for many of our residents. Participants in LPMR are paid a resident salary to receive a free Master’s in Public Health as part of this program. Many other health advocacy programs and research opportunities are also available, such as the Dartmouth Institute for Health Policy and Clinical Practice (TDI), Dartmouth Center for Healthcare Delivery Science, National Center for PTSD, Center for Neuroscience, Psychiatric research group and the Synergy Center. We also offer a didactic series in advocacy work, led by faculty who are heavily involved in advocacy work themselves.The Psychiatry Department has an active Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging committee that functions to improve awareness and training in these important topics. Planned activities include regular Journal Clubs and Grand Rounds focused on diversity, inclusion, and anti-racism as well as updating the residency curriculum to ensure broad and deep coverage of the effects of systemic racism on mental health. Residents rotate through a variety of clinical settings exposing them to a socio-economically and culturally diverse range of patients across Northern New England. Residents also have the opportunity to work in a resident-founded Transgender Mental Health clinic as well as to participate in the Upper Valley Human Rights Clinic writing affidavits for people seeking political asylum.
• Research Track
• The primary goal of our Research Track is to support the career development of physician-scientists devoted to treating patients with mental illness and advancing mental health-related knowledge through basic, translational, clinical, implementation and health-systems research. The research track resident positions are fully financially supported by the institution. To support academic development, each resident who matches to our research track receives department funding for attendance at 1 academic meeting per year in their area of study.The program director for the research track is Wilder Doucette, MD, PhD who is a former Research Track resident. Dr. Doucette will work in conjunction with the Research Track Committee to develop an individualized longitudinal mentored research training plan for each resident. The Research Track Committee is composed of senior department leadership and principal investigators representing research nodes of excellence. Each resident will join one of the research nodes based on their research interests. Each resident’s progress will be carefully monitored by Dr. Doucette and the Research Track Committee to ensure that their training plan and mentored research experience is proceeding as anticipated. The longitudinal training plan will also include an individualized research-focused curriculum consisting of seminars and courses (e.g., research methodology, statistics, ethics and grant writing) that are sponsored by various Departments and Institutes at Dartmouth.The research nodes of excellence are research groups at Dartmouth engaged in mental health-related research capable of supporting the development and transition of research track residents into junior faculty with a track record of supporting transitions from pilot funding to career development awards to independent funding (R01 or equivalent).Selected residents will receive substantial protected research time over the 4 years of psychiatry residency. Protected research time generally includes 2 weeks in PGY-1 and 6 or more weeks in PGY-2 plus a ½ day per week longitudinally throughout the year. There is 50% time devoted to research in the PGY-3 and PGY-4 years. This schedule allows residents to be eligible for the Loan Repayment Program sponsored by the NIH during residency training. Departmental funding for post-residency research in a post-doctoral or junior faculty capacity is also available. There are also several post-residency specialty fellowships available in which one could continue their research program. These include geriatric psychiatry, sleep medicine, addiction psychiatry, child and adolescent psychiatry and outcomes-oriented public sector psychiatry. The White River Junction VA Medical Center, an important training site for the residency and the location of the National Center for PTSD, offers additional post-residency training and funding opportunities.