Psychiatry Residency Program

Welcome from the Program Director

At WMed, our Psychiatry Residency Program is dedicated to developing excellent clinical psychiatrists, leaders, educators and advocates who are practice-ready, well-rounded, and provide patient-centered care that is thoughtful, empathic, and informed by a balanced bio-psychosocial perspective.

Together, we have created a training experience for residents and students that is rigorous, yet supportive and friendly. We boast faculty members who are accessible to residents, love to teach and foster an environment that is nurturing and enriching.

Each year, we welcome six to seven new residents to our program. The class size for our four-year curriculum provides for an ideal training environment that is stimulating and yet small enough to provide a fairly intimate and personalized learning experience.

Our residents work in different settings- two different tertiary hospitals, VA, Integrated Services of Kalamazoo and our own W Med outpatient clinic. This offers them experiences with diverse patient population and also exposure to various settings and EMR systems.

With a bio-psycho-social orientation, we emphasize knowledge of the neurosciences. Our medical students are eager learners who offer our residents opportunities to teach in both the pre-clinical and clinical years.

Our residents are also expected to participate as active citizens by serving on various department, WMed, and hospital committees. We are proud of their participation and advocacy for state of art care for vulnerable populations.

We believe it is important for our trainees to have a fundamental understanding of medical literature and basic research principles. We provide related didactics and require our residents to participate in scholarly activities. Many of our residents have presented at regional and national conferences and/or have been published. 

We are committed to resident growth and supportive of opportunities to enhance their learning experience. We are indebted to the many valuable contributions our residents have made to improve our program.

More About Us

• Our overriding goal is to educate and train physicians to be excellent clinical psychiatrists. To that end, we choose top-notch faculty who have a strong interest in teaching. We also structure service sizes so that our faculty have time to teach. You will find faculty to be readily accessible.
• Our residents are friendly and supportive of each other. They have a sense of belonging and are committed to the growth of the program.
• Southwest Michigan has a population of 1 million, and our program is the primary service center in the region. You will gain much experience with the more common mental health disorders and have exposure to some of the more unusual and difficult-to-treat problems.
• We have a very strong didactic program and protected time for you to attend your educational sessions. These sessions serve to build an excellent knowledge base and a foundation for clinical practice, in-training and board exams.
• We are strongly committed to providing you with excellent training in psychotherapy, with the primary modalities being supportive, interpersonal and cognitive-behavioral therapy.
• Our smaller program size affords us the opportunity to provide you with personalized attention in a learning environment that is both challenging and friendly.
• We are committed to serve all patients in the community. It is our medical school’s strategic priority to be known in the southwest region and nationally for excellence in health equity. We recognize that we are not where we want to be in achieving this goal. This is why we are committed to making all of our residents to feel they are seen, heard and valued with our culture that embodies belonging as central to diversity, inclusion and equity.
• Although you will have a rigorous learning experience here, we have taken steps to keep your stress manageable to ensure that you have time for a personal life.
• Kalamazoo is a great place to live, work and learn: With the medical school, several universities and colleges, as well as top local employers involved in the life sciences, the community is very academically oriented. For its relatively small size, it affords much to do in terms of cultural and recreational activities. The cost of living is very affordable and some of our residents have been able to purchase homes during their training. If you’re looking for a big-city experience, we are located midway between Chicago and Detroit – each a two-and-a half-hour drive away. And if you wish to remain in the area after graduation, as a number of our graduates have, there will likely be jobs available.