Letter from Program Director

Thank you for your interest in the Rush University Medical Center General Psychiatry Residency Program. Our program offers residents the opportunity to receive superb training from distinguished faculty in a stimulating academic environment.

Our program strives to teach residents to integrate both the psychopharmacological and psychotherapeutic paradigms in the assessment and care of people that require psychiatric treatment. Our faculty includes numerous prominent experts in both of these approaches as well as faculty that utilize both of these models in the care of their patients.

Residents in our program are mentored by many leading experts in the psychopharmacological approaches to psychiatric care.  Our Chair, Dr. William Scheftner has decades of experience as a clinical psychopharmacologist and researcher.  His areas of research interest are in the epidemiology and genetic etiology of mood disorders.  He is also a very accomplished clinician.  Dr. Scheftner works closely with the residents providing inpatient and outpatient supervision, leading courses on psychopathology and the Chairman’s Literature Seminar.  Philip Janicak, M.D. teaches our year long PGY-2 course on advanced psychopharmacology.  He is an internationally recognized authority on psychopharmacology.  He has recently published the 4th edition of his comprehensive textbook of psychopharmacology.  This is one of the leading textbooks in the field.  He supervises residents during their inpatient rotation and has mentored residents and junior attending psychiatrists throughout his eminent career.  Dr. Sushil Bagri is the Medical Director of our adult inpatient psychiatry units.  He has been a leading clinical psychopharmacologist in the Chicago area for over 20 years.  Residents in our program benefit from Dr. Bagri’s clinical knowledge and skill throughout their core inpatient psychiatry training. 

The strength of our faculty lies not only in biological psychiatry, but in training residents to become superb psychotherapists.  Our faculty is replete with experts in both psychodynamic and cognitive behavioral therapy. Dr. Arnold Goldberg, who is the Cynthia Oudejans Harris, MD Professor of Psychiatry, is one of the nation’s leading psychoanalytic scholars and a recipient of numerous of our residents’ teaching awards. He teaches the residents for 2.5 hours each week.  His course and teaching are legendary among our residents and the graduates of our program.  All applicants have the opportunity to observe and participate in his course during their interview with our program.  He has mentored numerous residents and faculty and has helped draw countless additional supervisors and psychotherapy instructors to our staff to teach our residents.  Over the past 13 years, our curriculum has evolved into one of the most in depth psychotherapy training programs in the country.  Dr. Sheila Dowd, one of our Associate Program Directors, leads our cognitive behavioral therapy training.  Dr. Dowd is highly regarded by all of the residents for her expertise and teaching style.  Dr. Dowd and our other cognitive behavioral therapy faculty provide our residents with instruction in this treatment modality during each year of training in our program.

The integration of psychotherapy and psychopharmacology is emphasized throughout our residents’ training.  We have numerous attending psychiatrists in our outpatient clinic whose main focus is to provide onsite supervision to our residents.  All of these clinicians work with our residents to determine if patients in our clinic should be best treated with either psychopharmacological or psychotherapeutic treatment or a combination of the two.

Residents in our program are educated in a department with a strong academic environment. All of our residents are trained in research design and in the interpretation of the psychiatric literature and have the opportunity to pursue numerous research opportunities available in the department.  Our research faculty have been investigators in numerous research projects funded by NIMH, other federal grantors, private industry and collaborative grants with cooperative institutions (i.e., Stroger Hospital).  Topics from those funded studies are quite diverse and include randomized trials with novel interventions in the treatment of depression, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia and schizoaffective disorder.  The faculty has also been significantly involved with the genetic linkage studies in both depression and bipolar disorder.  Current funded research also includes our faculty’s work with premenstrual dysphoric disorder. Recent studies also include comparing the benefits of adding cognitive behavioral therapy to reduce relapse in patients with depression who have been treated with psychopharmacological agents.  We are one of the few centers examining the safety of transcranial magnetic stimulation. 

We also have an extensive curriculum with countless seminars and courses that the residents attend throughout their training in our program. Our Department sponsors an annual Psychiatry Boards Review Course for psychiatrists preparing for their Boards exam.  Our residents have the opportunity to attend this CME course each year they are in our program, free of charge.

Our residents benefit from training in a strong academic department and also an outstanding medical center.  Rush University Medical Center offers outstanding residency and fellowship training in most medical specialties and sub-specialties.  There are approximately 620 housestaff per year.  The Medical College trains approximately 520 medical students per year.  The institution is widely recognized as one of the leading patient care hospitals in the nation. 

Rush University Medical Center is located in heart of one of the world’s great cities.  There are wide varieties of neighborhoods to live.  Chicago is world renown for the numerous parks that run along the entire beautiful lakefront, with some of the most famous skyscrapers in the world as a backdrop.   There are world famous restaurants, great museums of art, natural and technological science, the second largest aquarium in the nation, and two great zoos.  Other reasons to consider Chicago are Da Bears, Da Bulls, Da White Sox, Da Cubs, Da Blackhawks, Da Chicago Symphony Orchestra and Da Lyric Opera.

We accept six residents each year into our general psychiatry residency program. These residents, as well as residents in our child psychiatry fellowship program, and our Rush Medical College medical students, all help foster an exciting intellectual atmosphere.

We provide an extremely strong educational opportunity for residents interested in learning psychotherapy, psychopharmacology, and clinical research. We pride ourselves in creating an environment conducive to learning. I hope you will strongly consider our program. I would like to wish you the best of luck with your match and your future career in psychiatry.

Sincerely,

Daniel Levin, MD
Director, General Psychiatry Residency Program