Our program recognizes the vital importance of core psychiatric principles to all areas of medicine. We view the medical school undergraduate curriculum as a key opportunity to impart knowledge, skills and attitudes crucial for the future physician in any medical specialty, including but not limited to psychiatry and the neurosciences. Brigham and Women's Hospital and Brigham and Women's Faulkner Hospital psychiatry faculty, fellows, and residents are integrally involved in the preclinical psychiatry course, core clerkship, and longitudinal seminars in the third year Principal Clinical Experience. Psychiatry faculty also serve as research and clinical mentors.
Collaborating closely with superb educators in other medical specialties, we have prioritized the integration of neuroscience, internal medicine and psychiatry, and have pioneered collaborative care models in which psychiatrists serve as embedded outpatient consultants in primary care, oncology, transplantation, and infectious disease clinics, among others. Uniquely, medical students have the opportunity to learn psychiatry in these settings, as well as more traditional settings, providing a cutting-edge perspective of the field as it evolves toward the “medical home” model.
Third Year
Our hospitals are highly rated core sites for the Harvard Medical School psychiatry clerkship, each hosting up to two to three students per month. Gaston Baslet, MD, is the site director at Brigham and Women's Hospital, assisted by Jennifer Harris, MD. Students at both sites have shared didactics as well as required and optional experiences in collaborative care, as above. Students may observe the Electroconvulsive Therapy (ECT) Service at Brigham and Women’s Faulkner Hospital or the Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation (TMS) Service at Brigham and Women's Hospital. We also offer a one-day visit experience at Boston Children's Hospital for students who are interested in adolescent/child psychiatry.
Fourth Year
Our advanced medical psychiatry elective provides a rich experience in psychosomatic medicine as well as increased exposure to a broad range of liaison opportunities (including cardiac and lung transplant, OB/GYN, epilepsy, oncology, burn trauma, among others). Faculty are also dedicated to career mentoring of advanced students.
Dana-Farber Cancer Institute and Brigham and Women's Hospital offer an advanced elective in psychosocial oncology and palliative care, of which two weeks are spent on the medical psychiatry service seeing oncology patients.
Finally, elective coursework in women's mental health, addiction psychiatry, neuropsychiatry can also be arranged.
We welcome both Harvard Medical School students and students from other United States medical schools. Please contact the Harvard Medical School registrar's office to arrange a rotation.
