Program Description

Our mission is to provide excellent community-based didactic and clinical training to qualified and interested physicians to enable them to become highly competent clinical psychiatrists with an ethical and human approach to patient care.

Our program's goals and objectives are:

• To train residents to be clinicians with strong skills in psychotherapy and biological psychiatry.
• To help residents achieve their career goals.
• To provide a supportive environment for learning.
• To give opportunities for residents to balance their educational, professional and personal goals and responsibilities.

The Lutheran General Hospital Psychiatry Residency Program started in 1983. It is a fully accredited 4-year training program in General Psychiatry. Its values promote an atmosphere that facilitates optimal learning and stimulates the resident's development as a psychiatrist. Crucial to this atmosphere are close resident supervision, exposure to a rich variety of patients and treatment programs, and the high priority we give to education.

The program trains residents in an open, collegial atmosphere where residents and faculty interact closely. The residents receive close supervision for the clinical services that they provide. As their experience and knowledge increases, they are progressively given more freedom to make clinical judgments and independent decisions.

Residents have the opportunity to learn from the evaluation and treatment of the diverse patient population served at Lutheran General Hospital, which provides a rich variety of specialized psychiatric and addiction treatment programs. With 50 inpatient beds and a broad continuum of care, the system provides both basic psychiatric and addictions services to its surrounding communities. In addition, ALGH provides excellent tertiary services. The broad diversity of patients gives residents access to a wide and deep clinical experience.

Educational experiences for residents are not controlled by service obligations. Services are established and operated in such a way that residents are an integral part of patient care while the number and type of patients can be selected to provide an optimally balanced educational experience.