T1/T2 Curriculum

 

Click on a title for more information.

Psychiatry faculty participates in several areas of the preclinical curriculum for the Tulane School of Medicine, including:

Foundations in Medicine (FIM)

As Ethics faculty preceptors

As Preceptors for "Dynamics in Doctoring"
This 3 hour seminar during the second semester of FIM focuses on the dynamic relationship between doctor and patient through introducing the concepts of transference and counter-transference and how these relate to building rapport and empathy.  Through the use of video clips and small group interactions, seminar leaders aim to deliver content to improve understanding of the complexity of the alliance between doctor and patient.

Seminar Objectives:

  • Understand the concepts of 'transference' and 'counter-transference'  and the origin of these states
  • Begin to develop the skills of observation and interpretation of behavior and emotional states
  • Practice using observational and interpretation skills to identify transference and counter-transference reactions
  • Describe how the above mentioned skills contribute to facilitating and strengthening the doctor-patient relationship
Mechanisms of Disease-Psychiatry

This course, in general, is a year-long longitudinal exposure to pathology & pathophysiology, integrating the study of the nature of disease with the functional and structural changes that accompany those disease processes. Students are provided both the knowledge about structural and functional alterations that both cause and are the result of these processes. As a result of this course, students will also achieve greater skill in developing differential diagnoses related to these diseases. This course is organized by body systems and all coursework is coordinated with both the pharmacology and clinical diagnosis courses to unify the concepts and the terminology of the subject matter.

The psychiatry portion of this course is 2 weeks in the spring semester of the T2 year. This course presents the taxonomy, neuropsychiatric pathology, and clinical diagnosis of the psychiatric illnesses. We also explore normal psychological development and how it relates to pathological psychological development, underscore the important interface between psychiatric and non-psychiatric medical issues, and introduce the psychiatric evaluation. An additional special offering during this course is a session in the mindfulness, which covers the neurobiology behind mindfulness, and how mindfulness can be applied throughout the practice of medicine.The course utilizes faculty presentations, faculty-supervised small group standardized patient sessions, case discussions led by psychiatry residents, and several self-directed learning modules. There is also a special guest  presenter who tells her story of resiliency and recovery from severe and chronic mental illness.