Tower Health-Brandywine Hospital Launches First Residency Program

COATESVILLE, PA — Tower Health-Brandywine Hospital is initiating its first-ever residency program. The first-year class of the Tower Health-Brandywine Hospital General Psychiatry Residency Training Program will begin July 1, 2020. About eight residents will train each year, gaining experience in 32 positions including inpatient, outpatient, consultation-liaison, geriatric, community, substance abuse and child and adolescent psychiatry in clinic setting across the Philadelphia area.

"We inaugurated our program this year as a collaboration between a well-established psychiatry training program at Drexel University Psychiatry, and Brandywine Hospital’s highly regarded clinical services in behavioral and mental health," said Brandywine Hospital Interim CEO Vik Acharya. "Our program provides a variety of experiences to ensure that our trainees are exposed to a wealth of different types of patients and clinical approaches."

Donna M. Sudak, M.D., Tower Health-Brandywine Hospital General Psychiatry Residency Program Director, and Vice Chair for Education in the Department of Psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine, said the hospital is looking forward to partnering with Brandywine Hospital on this program. "The Drexel tradition emphasizes the importance of creating a nurturing, cohesive, friendly and collegial learning environment, and an unwavering commitment to education," said Sudak.

"It is our hope that residents will graduate with a broad range of skills and have the ability to provide pharmacological and psychotherapeutic interventions for patients with a variety of psychiatric disorders," said Wei Du, M.D., Interim Chair of Psychiatry at Brandywine Hospital, and Chair of the Department of Psychiatry at Drexel University College of Medicine.

Du said, "Residents will become skilled at functioning in multidisciplinary teams, will communicate effectively, and be advocates for patients beyond the bedside. Residents will develop practice habits that incorporate measurement-based care and quality improvement."

The four-year accredited general psychiatry residency program includes both didactic and clinical studies. The didactic curriculum and supervisory experiences emphasize a thorough and well-rounded approach to psychiatry with a focus on psychotherapy as a critical part of the skill set of every psychiatrist, according to a media release from Tower Health.

The clinical curriculum includes a mixture of training in different areas over the four years, including internal medicine, adult neurology, emergency services and behavioral health.

During the first and second years, residents rotate through a variety of inpatient settings, including time spent at Brandywine Behavioral Health, with one-month rotations on each of the four units – general adult, mood disorders, geriatric, and eating disorders. The program also includes rotations at other training sites involved with this residency program, the media release explained.

The third year is spent entirely in the outpatient setting. The fourth year includes a mixture of time spent on clinical activities for ongoing care of their outpatients, inpatient 'chiefships," and electives.

More information about the program can be found at: brandywine.towerhealth.org/academics/