State Hospital Training

Inpatient psychiatry training is an essential aspect of residency programs and a requirement for board certification in psychiatry. Most inpatient psychiatry training occurs within university hospitals, community hospitals, and VA hospitals. But there is one more type of hospital to which few residents are exposed—the state hospital. That needs to be changed.

State hospitals have patient populations and provide treatment on a basis different from other hospitals. State hospitals still provide longer hospitalizations and care for the most chronically mentally ill patients.

In addition, state hospitals have forensic units and units with specialized psychiatric populations, such as violent sexual predators, with whom residents do not commonly have an opportunity to work. Moreover, when residents—or later on as full-fledged psychiatrists—need to transfer patients to state hospital units, exposure to state hospitals will enable them to communicate more effectively with the staff psychiatrists there.

Inpatient state hospital training provides specialized education, awareness, and depth to inpatient psychiatry training, and both residents and state hospitals can benefit from it.