Steven Alan Epstein, MD,  Chair 

The teaching program of the Department of Psychiatry has been carefully designed to present the student with the biological, psychological, interpersonal, and social concepts of the discipline. This is accomplished with a curriculum that covers the four years of medical school instruction. The sequence of didactic material and experiential exposures provides the student with a knowledge base, skills, and appropriate attitudes and values that can be brought to any postgraduate specialty choice or career in medicine. The program enables the student to enter postgraduate medical education with an understanding of the common psychiatric problems and issues encountered by a practicing physician and the treatments and interventions available. 

During the first year, the department teaches Patients, Physicians and Behavior, which emphasizes the medical interview and the human responses to major illness and disability. The student's first live patients are introduced at the outset of the course with visits to the medical and surgical units of Georgetown University Hospital. The student then discusses the interview in a small group setting with an instructor leading, supporting, and explaining principles of interviewing and the varying human reactions to illness. These small groups are supplemented by lectures, panel discussions, and patient demonstrations that are presented before the whole class. During this series bereavement, coping with cancer, the aged patient, the physician-patient relationship, and other issues are reviewed. 

The primary goals of the second-year course, Introduction to Clinical Psychiatry, are learning the terminology and classification of common mental disorders, the neurobiological and psychosocial aspects of these disorders, and the problem-solving strategies in diagnosis and treatment. A variety of instructional methods are used during the course, including lecture, videotape, and live patient interview/demonstration, and serial videotapes of one patient over time. The department also offers electives to students during the last half of the second year. Popular electives have included Advanced Interviewing and a seminar in Medicine and Literature, among others. 

In the third year, a rotating clinical clerkship in psychiatry is offered at Georgetown University Medical Center or one of the affiliates: the Washington Veterans Affairs Medical Center or the Washington Hospital Center. The student is assigned to one hospital for four weeks. While there, the student functions as a participating member of a treatment team, which consists of a staff psychiatrist, psychiatric resident-in-training, psychiatric nurses, a social worker, and a psychologist. This immersion in clinical or "ward" work gives the student firsthand knowledge of a wide variety of mental disorders, as well as the full array of treatments applied in their management. This experience also provides students with the opportunity to see patients with serious physical illness complicated by mental disorders, as well as interactions between major medical/ surgical problems, and psychiatric disability. 

Under a recent revision of the fourth-year curriculum, the Department of Psychiatry joins other clinical disciplines in a new cluster of electives with the overall designation of primary/ambulatory care. A student may select a four-week Psychiatry and Medical Practice track. This clerkship experience centers on the common problems a physician meets in a primary care setting and concentrates on the interface between psychiatry and other medical disciplines. The focus is on issues such as depression, anxiety, substance abuse, dementia, delirium, and medication-induced behavioral abnormalities, and there is an opportunity to observe special patient populations such as patients with chronic pain, cancer, stroke, as well as geriatric patients, amputees, and HIV-positive patients. This fourth-year selective grows out of the department's longstanding interest in medical psychiatric or psychosomatic problem solving and teaching medical students psychosomatic psychiatry. 

In addition to the above courses and programs, electives offered to fourth-year students include: Research in Psychiatry; Child Psychiatry; Forensic Psychiatry; Psychosomatic Medicine; Acting Internship. These electives  can be tailored to the student's interests

Welcome to the Department of Psychiatry at Georgetown University Hospital!

Our mission is to graduate psychiatrists who are scholarly humanistic clinicians, excellent physicians and well-trained psychotherapists. Georgetown's Department of Psychiatry has over 300 faculty members with nationally recognized expertise in their fields who supervise and teach our residents. The relatively small size of our residency allows for intimate one-on-one mentorship and exceptional supervision, as well as stimulating small group experiences. We are located in the Washington D.C. Metropolitan area, a beautiful city with a rich historical background and myriad professional and leisure opportunities.

Our residents rotate at Georgetown University Hospital, which is consistently rated among the best hospitals in the nation by U.S. News and World Report. Here at Georgetown, we have outstanding inpatient, partial hospitalization, and Psychosomatic Medicine services. In addition, we have outpatient specialty programs in  Geriatric Psychiatry, Eating Disorders, Psychiatry for the Medically Ill, Child/Adolescent Psychiatry,  Psychopharmacology and more. Georgetown Psychiatry residents also rotate at other premiere medical institutions, such as the Washington Hospital Center, and the flagship hospital in the VA system, the Washington DC Veteran's Affairs Medical Center, a hub of research and learning. Over the years we have developed a special relationship with the National Institute of Mental Health, and are pleased to be able to offer an elective research track that includes an opportunity to spend the fourth year of training at NIMH doing research with some of the most well-known and talented researchers in the field. Georgetown faculty and residents conduct numerous NIH-funded research projects, some of which are detailed on the Faculty Research and Resident Research links on this page. I am proud of our Center for Mental Health Outreach, a community program for the underserved in our area that provides another important elective experience for our residents.

In brief, Georgetown University Hospital?s Psychiatry Residency Program is a strong, stable, well-balanced training program that will prepare you well for the exciting and ever-changing field of psychiatry. I hope that you find this website helpful, and look forward to talking with you in the future.

Best regards,

Steven A. Epstein, MD
Professor and Chair
Department of Psychiatry