Enter your E-mail address to receive our newsletter

Psychiatry Residency Awardees

Awardees for Curriculum Development for Psychiatry Residency Training Programs

This award is given to outstanding psychiatric residency training programs that address spirituality and mental health. Click on school names for descriptions of their programs.

2006

2005

2003

2002

2000

1999

1998

Program Descriptions

Baylor College of Medicine, Menninger Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: Linda B. Andrews, MD, Director of Residency Education

Course Design

For Institutional Change

George Washington University Medical Center, Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: James L. Griffith, MD, Associate Chairman Psychiatry and Neurology

Course Design

Research

Texas Tech University, Health Sciences Center, School of Medicine, Department of Neuropsychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: Thomas F. McGovern, Ed.D., Professor of Neuropsychiatry

Modified resident curriculum to emphasize spirituality as an essential core element of psychiatry training, which includes:

University of California, Irvine, Department of Psychiatry & Human Behavior
Course Director: Charles Nguyen, MD, Assistant Residency Director

Course Design:

For institutional change:

Research:

Rush University Medical Center, Department of Religion, Health & Human Values
Course Director: Patricia Murphy, PhD
Course: Bridging the Gap: Science and Spirituality

Bridging the Gap: Science and Spirituality Curriculum at Rush University Medical Center responds to the growing body of research that relates religion/spirituality to health outcomes as well as the shifting sensitivity to cultural ethnicities reflected in the DSM-IV. The curriculum integrates research, theory, and clinical experience. Lectures over the three year period are as follows:

Each year, residents address issues of transference and countertransference related to religion/spirituality in Psychiatric Resident Case Presentations.

Grand Rounds presentations, which extend our training to the others at Rush and at neighboring medical centers, include "From Research to Practice: Advances in Spiritually-Integrated Treatment" by Kenneth Pargament, Ph.D. and "Recent Research in Religion and Depression" by Patricia Murphy, Ph.D. in the first year of the curriculum. In the second and third years of the curriculum, Grand Rounds topics are Spirituality and Psychotherapy and God Images and Object Relations.

First year residents participate with the chaplain in the Spiritual Resources Group on the adult psychiatry inpatient units. Second year residents are orientated to bereavement related to perinatal death and accompany a chaplain attending to a death in labor and delivery or the neonatal intensive care units. They also participate in the spirituality groups as part of their rotation in chemical dependency. Third and fourth year residents incorporate their training into outpatient practice.

University of British Columbia, Vancouver General Hospital, Department of Psychiatry
Course Directors: Soma Ganesan, MD FRCP; Andrea Grabovac, MD FRCP
Course: Interface between Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry

The "Interface between Religion, Spirituality and Psychiatry" course for psychiatry residents at the University of British Columbia promotes increased understanding of spiritual aspects of self and others and the effective translation of this knowledge into clinical practice. The mandatory 10 session didactic course is taught by faculty from diverse backgrounds, including pastoral care, counseling psychology, religious studies and psychiatry. In addition, an elective quarterly Journal Club focused on this topic and departmental grand rounds provide opportunity for further discussion and exploration.

Improved education at the resident level is essential for raising physicians' awareness of the importance of spirituality in patient care. Teaching residents must therefore also be coupled with course evaluations that measure the efficacy of the training that residents receive, in order to determine if the goals of the educational program are being met in the most effective way. Therefore, in addition to the standard course evaluations completed by residents, course effectiveness will be evaluated using a Course Impact Questionnaire that will be administered at the beginning of the course, at wk 10 and again at 6-month followup.

Learning objectives for the didactic portion of the course include the current understanding of the relationship between religious and spiritual beliefs and physical and mental health, introduction to spiritual phenomenology, including spiritual emergencies (e.g., Kundalini episodes), current research literature on neurobiology of spiritual experience and spiritual/religious issues in psychodynamic therapy (e.g., significance of God images). By the end of the course, residents have learned the skills to take a spiritual/religious history, to incorporate information gathered into the biopsychosocialspiritual understanding of the patient, and to reflect this in the diagnosis and treatment plan. They are able to identify how their own spiritual/religious beliefs might impact their case formulation, diagnosis and management plans and recognize and work through transference and countertransference reactions. Criteria for referral to chaplains, spiritual directors or culturally based healers are reviewed.

Clinical application of above material will be through supervised assessments, formulation and management of cases. Elective sites include the Vancouver Hospital Psychiatry Cross-cultural Clinic, which is a an outpatient psychiatric clinic staffed by a team of psychiatrists speaking seventeen different languages, and the British Columbia Cancer Agency, where treatment includes palliative care and end-of-life issues.

University of Kansas Medical Center, Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences
Course Director: Joan M.T. Collison, MD
Course: Development of a Departmental-Based Curriculum of Spirituality in Healthcare for Psychiatry Residents, other Healthcare Professionals, and Clergy/Pastoral Care Professionals

Implementation of this course is based upon the underlying premise that attending to the spiritual dimension of patients' lives is a vital aspect of the foundational imperative of medicine to heal. Although human spirituality is often unrecognized, it remains a powerful source of both strength and challenge for all lives impacted by illness, both as patients and as those who care for patients within personal or professional relationships. For healthcare professionals, awareness of our own personal spirituality is key to deepening our understanding of the interrelationship of spiritual, psychological, and physical aspects of health, while also essential to growth in our capacity for sensitive attunement and compassionate response to the spiritual needs of patients within the healthcare environment. Goals of this course include:

Participation in core didactic lectures is required for psychiatric residents, and open to medical, nursing, and social work students, as well as other healthcare professionals performing psychiatric rotations during the course. Master's and doctoral level students from local seminaries, and local chaplaincy students, will also be invited to participate in core didactic sessions. Psychiatry residents will be encouraged to participate in a course-based research project assessing spiritual care needs of patients receiving acute or chronic mental healthcare services. The course additionally includes annual grand rounds, and ongoing individually structured small learning groups, designed to offer additional in-depth and specifically focused educational opportunities spanning the 3-year curriculum. These will be publicized and open to healthcare and spiritual care professionals throughout the University of Kansas and local Kansas City medical community. Selected didactic courses may also be repeated in evening sessions to accommodate a greater number of course participants, based upon interest levels of small group and grand rounds participants.

University of South Carolina School of Medicine, Department of Neuropsychiatry
Course Director: Craig Stuck, MD
Course: Palmetto Health/University of South Carolina Curriculum on Spirituality: Incorporating a Spiritual Worldview within Psychiatry in the Bible Belt

The Spirituality and Cultural Competency Psychiatry Curriculum at the University of South Carolina involves integration of didactic and rotational experiences within the general and child psychiatry residency programs. It also includes a unique collaboration of disciplines including faculty and students from psychiatry, psychology, and seminary programs. The goal of this curriculum is to educate, motivate, and encourage integration of spiritual issues into psychiatric practice.

Lecture topics:

For institutional change:

Research: