UC San Diego Medical Center

UC San Diego Medical Center is a modern 440-bed full-service teaching and research facility built in 1963 and renovated in 1993. The medical center is located in the Hillcrest area of San Diego, about twenty minutes by car from the main UCSD campus in La Jolla.

Neuropsychiatry Behavioral Medicine Unit (NBMU)

NBMU is an eighteen-bed, acute care psychiatric unit that is staffed by a full time attending physician, chief resident, psychiatric residents, psychologist, occupational therapist, medical students, psychiatric R.N.'s and L.V.N.'s, and social workers. The unit emphasizes use of treatment teams, family therapy, and a milieu approach in addition to incorporating state-of-the-art psychopharmacolgic therapy, supportive psychotherapy techniques, and electroconvulsive treatment (ECT). Selected patients also participate in research protocols that are designed to investigate the psychophysiology, neuropsychology and neurobiology of schizophrenia and other mental illnesses. The patients' primary psychiatric physicians are PGY1 residents who coordinate all aspects of patient care with the help of the treatment team.

Medical Center Consultation-Liaison (CL) Psychiatry

The CL program provides consultation and liaison services to the UCSD Medical Center and the VA Medical Center. Special liaison activities include: pediatrics, intensive care unit, burn unit, dialysis, transplant program, AIDS clinic, and oncology. PGY2 residents rotate through both CL services. PGY1, 2 and 3 residents provide nighttime coverage for the CL services at the UCSD Medical Center with supervision provided by faculty and senior residents.

Senior Behavioral Health Program (SBH)

The SBH Program has three components: a 14 bed inpatient unit located on 7E at the Hillcrest Medical Center, two outpatient clinics, and a community consultation service. Patients are evaluated and treated by a multi-disciplinary team that includes board-certified geriatric psychiatrists, geriatric internal medicine specialists, psychologists, social workers, psychiatric nurses, registered dietitians, occupational therapists, and physical therapists. Residents rotate on the state-of-the-art SBH inpatient unit for at least 1 month during PGY-2.

Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Services (CAPS)

CAPS is a twenty-eight-bed, inpatient service that includes an adolescent inpatient service with children ages 14-17 years, and a combined child-adolescent inpatient service where the age range is 2-14. Treatment approaches include individual and group psychotherapy, behavior modification, therapeutic community, psychopharmacology, and family therapy. Rotating through this service for two to three months during PGY2, residents share primary responsibility for two to four patients at a time, and may also participate in care for up to four additional patients where the resident does not personally provide all aspects of care.

Outpatient Psychiatric Services

UC San Diego Outpatient Psychiatric Services is located at the UC San Diego Medical Center in the Hillcrest area of San Diego and provides over 30,000 patient visits per year. Part of the clinic serves as an outpatient "private practice" model for our training program. The clinic also provides services for county-funded patients. Clinic staff consists of attending physicians, residents, medical students, social workers, psychologists, MFCC interns, and a psychiatric nurse. Using a multidisciplinary approach, the service provides training for psychiatric residents, social workers, psychology students, medical students, and non-psychiatric physicians. A number of specialty clinics and programs enrich the outpatient experience for trainees. These include a dual diagnosis program, obsessive-compulsive disorders clinic, mood clinic, schizophrenic spectrum disorders clinic and the unique family survivors of violent death program.

Treatment modalities include individual, couples, family and group psychotherapy-both dynamic and behavioral-and medication treatment. Selected patients participate in psychopharmacology research and innovative "biologically informed psychotherapies." PGY3 residents spend their entire year based at the Outpatient Clinic where they function as outpatient psychiatrists. In addition, selected patients are followed by PGY2 and PGY4 residents. This provides the potential of a 3-year longitudinal experience in psychotherapy.

Outpatient Psychiatry Clinics, La Jolla

The outpatient clinics at La Jolla encompasses a wide variety of differing specialty psychiatry programs as well as a general psychiatry. These specialty programs include Obsessive Compulsive Disorder, College Mental Health, Sexual Health, TMS, Senior Behavioral Health, Teens, ADHD, Women's Reproductive Mental Health, Addiction, Pain and Neuropsychology. Each program is dedicated to their area of expertise, with skilled experts in their fields providing excellent, evidence-based, front line innovative treatments to their patients.

PGY III and IV residents have the opportunity to rotate in a number of these programs. Residents can learn more about their area of interest, provide care to patients within that area, and receive excellent supervision and teachings from renowned faculty.

Eating Disorders Program

The Department of Psychiatry at UCSD is proud to announce a new Eating Disorder Program. The program presently includes an outpatient service located in the La Jolla area near campus. Plans are afoot to open an inpatient unit soon.