During the six week rotation, three students are given significant responsibilities in the evaluation and treatment of all patients admitted to the Evaluation Team. Supervision is provided by a resident and a full-time attending physician.  The strength of the experience is the direct role of the student in caring for their patient under close attending supervision. Daily work rounds are held in a unique inter-disciplinary forum where the public and private sectors cooperate to determine the best possible treatment options for the patient.  The student is expected to attend team meetings, commitment hearings, patient groups and family meetings.

Ambulatory Experience:

The Blue Ridge Behavioral Healthcare meets weekly to give the student an opportunity to see patients who are recovering from persistent and severe mental illnesses. In this clinic the student may see patients who have recently been discharged from inpatient stays, as well as others who have been stably maintained as outpatients. In addition, each student is assigned to the Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Clinic that meets once a week. During this clinic the student will assess and treat neuro-behavioral disorders in children and adolescents. The students also attend a geriatric psychiatry clinic. Finally, each student will rotate through the HIV Clinic, in which a psychiatrist consults on outpatients suffering from HIV.

Call:

The call at CRMH is rotated among the students with supervision from Psychiatry residents. Each student is on call for eight evenings, with no Saturday or Sunday call.

Didatics:

An extensive lecture series has been developed by the faculty at CRMH. These lectures are organized to build upon fundamental knowledge from the first and second years of medical school.

Weekly case conferences:  students are observed interviewing patients or the students may watch a skilled clinician interview a patient. Through this experience the student develops effective interviewing techniques that help in history taking and forming good physician-patient relationships.