M4 Psychiatry

• MED MD 520: Acute Psychiatry in Managed Care
  Bournewood Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital in the community, is a core adult inpatient training site for the residency program. This elective provides students with the opportunity to learn acute inpatient psychiatry, including patient evaluation, diagnosis, and treatment in a multidisciplinary setting. Students will learn about psychopharmacology and short-term psychotherapy management of patients with psychiatric disorders. Many patients are enrolled in managed care programs allowing students to also learn about systems of care, managed care approaches to psychiatric and substance use disorders.
• MED MD 521: Adolescent Psychiatry
  Bournewood Hospital, a private psychiatric hospital in the community, is a core inpatient adolescent training site for the residency program. This elective is an excellent opportunity to work with adolescents with psychiatric and dual diagnosis disorders in a managed care environment. Students will be members of a multidisciplinary team learning about psychopharmacology, psychotherapy, family therapy, and other treatment modalities. Students will learn about systems of care and the interface between social and educational services for adolescents.
• MED MD 524: Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry
  This four week elective in Psychosomatic Medicine with Dr. Wilensky is a core training site for the residency program and the psychosomatic fellowship program. This course offers a consultation-liaison experience, with a focus on clinical work designed to enhance student's ability to understand and appreciate the psychosocial aspects of medical illness. Emphasis will be placed on the development of interviewing techniques and differential diagnostic styles and increased responsibility for the development of brief treatment strategies. Interested students may choose to focus their clinical work in a particular area of the hospital or with a specific service. In addition, the student will be required to do research in an area of interest involving psychosomatic medicine with the development of a paper and presentation to members of the Psychosomatic Medicine team at the end of the rotation. This course is not intended solely for those interested in psychiatry as a specialty, but especially for those interested in the areas of general medicine and primary care.
• MED MD 525: Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry - VABHC West Roxbury
  Under close supervision, students in this elective will work as integral members of the consultation-liaison psychiatry service at the VA Boston Healthcare System, West Roxbury Campus. Students will evaluate and treat patients in the emergency room and acute medical setting for whom psychiatry consultation is requested. Common consultation requests include suicidality, substance intoxication or withdrawal, psychosis, delirium, depression, and capacity to make medical decisions. Students will work closely with attending psychiatrists as well as psychiatry residents, consultation-liaison psychiatry fellows, and addictions psychiatry fellows. Students will participate in daily teaching rounds and will receive additional teaching through formal didactic sessions. Students will receive individual supervision both at the bedside and in formal sessions. Students will carry up to four patients at any given time and will actively participate in daily patient care. Duty hours will be Monday through Friday, without night or weekend requirements. In addition to daily patient care, students will complete two brief, informal presentations on clinical questions related to their patients, as well as a thirty-minute formal presentation at the end of the rotation on a topic relevant to consultation-liaison psychiatry. The elective will expose students to a wide variety of psychiatric diagnoses, with a focus on how psychiatric issues interact with acute medical illness. By the end of the elective, students will show a nuanced understanding of how to perform a psychiatric consultation in the emergency room or acute medical setting and how psychiatric and medical issues affect one another, along with advanced skill in patient interviewing, oral presentations, and clinical documentation.
• MED MD 526: Outpatient Psychiatry
  Outpatient Psychiatry is a 4-week clinical elective. Students will have the opportunity to work closely with faculty who have expertise in collaborative care, severe psychosis, HIV psychiatry, addiction psychiatry, refugee mental health, adult psychiatry, child/adolescent psychiatry, and women's mental health. There will be an opportunity to rotate through Healthcare for the Homeless as part of their HIV psychiatry experience. Students will have the opportunity to improve their knowledge of psychopharmacology and brief psychotherapy, as well as participate in patient evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, and management of side effects.
• MED MD 528: Inpatient Psychiatric Management
  Inpatient Psychiatric Management
• MED MD 529: Emergency Psychiatry and Crisis Intervention
  This elective is for the BU medical student to actively engage in and learn more about emergency psychiatric care and crisis intervention. Students will improve their understanding of the mental health system and resources for patients who are experiencing psychiatric emergencies and crises. This elective provides an opportunity for the student to clinically manage patients presenting for acute psychiatric care and to experience some of the changes that are being made to the field of community crisis intervention to improve health equity in accessing high-quality psychiatric care. Students will learn about the range of services and resources that are available to support the acute psychiatric needs of patients, from the level of the Emergency Department to community focused interventions, with a particular focus on services for patients experiencing significant psychosocial stressors and health inequities. This elective takes place in the Emergency Department at Boston Medical Center and associated community crises centers. Students will work approximately three 10-hour shifts a week in the Psychiatric Emergency Department and two 8-hour shifts in associated community sites, all under the supervision of psychiatry attendings. In addition, students will work closely with psychiatry residents and social work staff. Students will have opportunities to interview patients, obtain collateral information, participate in disposition determinations, complete safety assessments, develop treatment plans, and write notes for the patients they treat in the Emergency Department and crisis intervention settings. Teaching will occur on a case-by-case basis. By the end of the rotation, students will have developed skills in managing acute agitation, utilizing verbal de-escalation techniques for patients in crisis, conducting in-depth suicide assessments, assessing patients with altered mental status, recognizing and treating emergent psychiatric conditions, and assessing psychiatric disposition needs. In addition to the three days per week managing patients in the Psychiatric Emergency Department, students will have the opportunity to spend two days each week working in select associated psychiatric crisis settings. Students will be able to select among sites including, the BMC Community Behavioral Health Center (CBHC), the Community Crisis Stabilization (CCS) unit at the Solomon Carter Fuller Building, Faster Paths, the ED Addiction Service, the Addiction Psychiatry Treatment Program (APTP), the Mobile Crisis Team, the Mental Health Court team, the Wellness and Recovery After Psychosis (WRAP) Program, and the Multi Visit Patient Program (MVPP). This elective will allow students to gain a better understanding of the full continuum of care and understanding of alternative levels of care for acute psychiatric crises.