Research and Scholarly Activity

The Department of Psychiatry at Rush continues its tradition of making significant research contributions to the field. Our faculty researchers remain on the forefront of psychiatric research. All of our residents participate in research studies during their Adult Inpatient Rotations and during their part-time Outpatient Research Rotation at the Treatment Research Center during their PGY-3. We hold research forums for our residents. At this forum, our clinical researchers explain how they became interested in research and which studies they are currently working on. The forum is designed to facilitate resident involvement in ongoing research studies or to help the residents identify mentors if they want to develop their own research projects. We train all of our residents to perform the Structured Clinical Interview for DSM-IV. This is a standard screening tool utilized in many clinical psychiatric research studies. All residents are expected to learn to interpret the psychiatric literature in order to critically follow new developments in the field and participate in our Chairman’s Literature Seminar that is co-taught by our Department Chair, Dr. William Scheftner and by another senior faculty member, Dr. Howard Kravitz. Both of these psychiatrists have expertise in the interpretation of clinical studies and research design. Our PGY-3s participate in a course on Research Methodology. All PGY-3 and PGY-4 present at our Departmental Grand Rounds. Residents in our program have the volunteer opportunity to contribute to a newsletter written by residents and fellows under supervision of a faculty mentor. The newsletter, edited by Dr. Bezalel Dantz, focuses on significant studies published throughout the medical literature that are deemed pertinent to the general psychiatrist. In addition, many of our residents write book reviews for recently published psychiatric textbooks.