Program Philosophy

The BIDMC-Harvard Psychiatry Residency Program is a collaborative and supportive postgraduate medical education program designed to train physicians to become leaders in the field of psychiatry. The program uses an apprentice-style model, focusing on experiential learning and faclitation of longitudinal and supportive relationships between faculty and residents, and combines the strengths of partnering institutions to graduate sophisticated, patient-focused, professional psychiatrists knowledgeable in all areas of psychopathology, pharmacology, psychotherapy, and the neurosciences.

Supervision and Administration

The training program is overseen by the Program Director, Dr. Christie Sams, and two Associate Program Directors, Dr. Christine Wittmann and Dr. Timothy Scarella. The program directors collaborate closely with the department administration and clinical, didactic, research, and supervisory faculty in order to provide residents with a thorough and diverse training experience that prioritizes resident development.

Each resident is assigned one of the program directors as an advisor. The advisor will meet regularly with the trainee to oversee their development and career planning throughout residency. Residents who enter the program with a defined interest and/or have identified a desired mentor are encouraged to establish a formal mentoring relationship early in the course of their training; for those residents who do not, the program provides a general mentor at the beginning of PGY1 year to help the resident think about how to develop clinical and academic interests through elective experiences and scholarly work. Scholarly work is also overseen by Dr. Roscoe Brady and Dr. John Torous, the directors of our scholarly project program.

Residents work directly with faculty physicians who provide clinical and didactic teaching and feedback. Most services are also supervised by a chief resident. Attending physicians and chief residents are expected to meet with residents on their clinical service regularly for feedback.

Residents are assigned an individual psychotherapy supervisor in their PGY2 year and meet one-on-one with this person on a weekly basic during the year to discuss their longitudinal psychodynamic psychotherapy case. In the PGY3 and PGY4 years, residents have two individual psychodynamic psychotherapy supervisors with whom they meet for one hour per week per supervisor. Residents also have group and/or paired CBT supervision and group supervision in couples and group therapy. In the outpatient clinic, each resident is also assigned a case-load supervisor to help manage administrative aspects of the outpatient case load and a psychopharmacology supervisor who has protected time during resident clinics to discuss and see cases with residents. In total, each resident has 4-6 hours of direct supervision each week throughout the program.