Psychiatry Residency Mentorship

Each Resident is paired with a Faculty Advisor to help celebrate the triumphs and navigate the challenges of residency.

The faculty advisors meet with the residents at least semi-annually, but often more frequent and casual conversations keep them in touch. The training office keeps a list of faculty’s’ interests to help the residents also find mentors in their areas of interest.

Residents often note that they find “organic” mentors through different rotations, clinical experience and research experience. 

University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt has a wide net of alumni and faculty from diverse backgrounds, allowing residents to easily contact anyone in their field of interest or to answer questions. Mentoring is very important to the faculty and residents at University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Residency Program. We seek to enhance these relationships daily through continuing improvements and integrating feedback from residents and faculty. 

Medical Student Teaching

Medical Student Education is an integral part of the residents and attendings daily activities at University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Psychiatry Residency Program. Students are involved in all psychiatric services at University of Maryland Medical Center and in many of the services at Sheppard Pratt Hospital.

The goal of psychiatric education is to assist medical students in acquiring an understanding of and an appreciation for the application of behavioral and psychiatric principles in patient care and health maintenance through an exposure to a progressive sequence of intellectual stimulations, clinical experiences and appropriate professional socialization within the interdisciplinary framework of the new curriculum.



Opportunities for residents to be involved in medical student teaching

Introduction to Clinical Medicine

Psychiatry faculty and residents teach in the Psychiatry portion of the Brain and Behavior course and in the Psychiatry blocks of the Introduction to Clinical Medicine course (ICM 2) during students’ first and second year of medical school. The course formats are lectures, audiovisual demonstrations (videotapes, live simulcast clinical interviews), small group discussions, problem-solving sessions, team-based learning and assigned readings for self-study.

Psychiatric Interviewing/Mental Status Examination

This component is part of the medical students second year Introduction to Clinical Medicine (ICM 2) course, which is devoted to specialty physical diagnosis and examination. The psychiatric course is devoted to psychiatric interviewing, history taking, and the mental status examination. A general introductory lecture is followed by three-hour small group sessions distributed throughout the year. Each student is assigned to one session and performs a live psychiatric interview, observes fellow students performing interviews, and reviews interviewing techniques and psychopathologic concepts with the small group preceptor-residents and faculty.

Clinical Teaching

The students participate in their clerkship during their third year of medical school. Students work under the preceptorship of a psychiatry attending and resident while assigned to an inpatient or consult service. The residents are in charge of monitoring and help teach the students on their clinical rotation-showing them how to be a solid psychiatrist on the inpatient and outpatient wards.

Didactic Sessions

Residents are invited to be involved in didactical teaching sessions for the students throughout the year and can serve as mentors for students interested in psychiatry.

The Combined Accelerated Program in Psychiatry (CAPP)

This elective track has become nationally visible for its success in engaging students in psychiatry through an advanced four-year curriculum that begins in the freshman year.

The program has continued to admit 12 first year medical students each year. From the first month of the first year of medical school, the track provides an unfolding progression of combined small group seminars and clinical experiences in the behavioral sciences and clinical psychiatry.

• Residents are an integral part of leading interview seminars, didactic experiences and having the students shadow them to gain further knowledge.

Questions about this program can be directed to Ann Hackman, MD, Division Director for Community Psychiatry.

Community Outreach

The residents at University of Maryland/Sheppard Pratt Psychiatry residency program know the value in being involved in the community around them.

Fostering close relationships with the community allows the residents to grow as physicians and community members.

We believe that to be a good psychiatrist, you must know what is happening in the world outside the hospital doors. Residents have gotten involved in a myriad of different outreach programs.

• Volunteering at local resource centers for community members (soup kitchens, food closets)
• Voting Campaign to help community members register to vote and obtain ballots
• Working with the Maryland Psychiatry Society's Legislative Committee to make meaningful changes in the Maryland legislature regarding issues related to psychiatry in Maryland