This specialty residency is a second year, PGY-2 residency program and applicants must have completed a PGY-1 residency prior to starting their residency year. Four nationally known psychiatric pharmacy faculty members are involved in precepting the resident during different clinical rotations (Drs. Stimmel, Wincor, Dopheide and Park).

This psychiatric specialty residency is offered by the USC School of Pharmacy in cooperation with the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences at the Keck School of Medicine at USC. The program develops competent psychiatric pharmacy practitioners with an emphasis on clinical skills, clinical teaching and knowledge necessary for psychiatric practice.

Clinical Practice

Residents provide clinical services, such as drug therapy monitoring, drug consultation to staff and patient education. Throughout the year in the outpatient clinic, residents act as primary therapists for a caseload of patients.

The major training sites include the LAC+USC Medical Center Psychiatric Hospital and Clinic, and the USC University Hospital. The hospital has 40 adult beds and 10 adolescent beds, while the clinic has 1200 active treatment cases. Additional training sites include the Veteran's Administration Health Care Network of West Los Angeles and the Behavioral Health Center Hospital in Rosemead. Since the faculty group at USC was integrally involved in the development of the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists Standards/Learning Objectives for residencies in psychiatric pharmacy, the objectives of the USC residency are clearly reflected in the official ASHP document.

Additional Requirements

Beyond the coursework provided to all pharmacy residents at USC, psychiatric pharmacy specialty residents attend selected seminars and conferences offered by the Department of Psychiatry. In addition, residents participate in regularly scheduled psychiatric pharmacy business meetings for program planning, peer review and journal club. Sufficient flexibility is built into the program to allow for electives in a number of psychiatric pharmacy related areas including:

• Ambulatory care psychiatry
• Substance abuse
• Child psychiatry
• Eating disorders treatment
• Geriatric psychiatry
• Consultation/liaison psychiatry
• Emergency psychiatric services

Teaching

Residents are actively involved in the Therapeutics curriculum for Pharm.D. students. Each resident provides a didactic lecture and develops a psychiatric case study with preceptor supervision. During the months that pharmacy students are present at the site, residents are responsible for student supervision, which includes pharmacy rounds with students, involvement in teaching conferences and participation in oral and written examinations.

Research

Residents may collaborate with any of the psychiatric pharmacy faculty in their ongoing research projects, or they may choose some other topic of interest. Members of the psychiatric group have a variety of interests and are engaged in research in a number of areas:

• Psychiatric pharmacy services/expanded roles (Drs. Stimmel, Dopheide and Wincor)
• Instructional technology (Dr. Wincor)
• Depression in rheumatology and geriatric patients (Dr. Stimmel)
• Adult and pediatric psychiatry (Dr. Dopheide)
• Sleep disorders (Drs. Dopheide, Stimmel and Wincor)
• Consultation and liaison psychiatry (Dr. Park)
• Psychoneuroimmunology and adult psychiatry (Dr. Park)

Our Goal

We expect that the psychiatric specialty resident will complete our program a highly competent clinician-teacher capable of establishing a clinical service and teaching program in any psychiatric setting. In addition, the resident will be poised to contribute to the advancement of psychiatric pharmacy practice nationally.

Contact Us

If you have questions or need additional information, please contact:

Julie A. Dopheide, Pharm.D., BCPP
Director, Psychiatric Pharmacy Residency Program
Telephone: (323) 442-1454
Pager: (213) 717-7704
Email: dopheide@hsc.usc.edu

William C. Gong, Pharm.D.,FASHP
Director, Residency and Fellowship Training
Telephone: (323) 442-2625
Email: wgong@usc.edu