Thank you for your interest in our program. As a psychiatry residency program set in a tertiary medical center in rural New Hampshire, we believe we offer an ideal setting to train and live. It was this unique balance of an academic powerhouse set in rural New England that drew many of us to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center. The Upper Valley is a great place to live, regardless of your interests. Home to Dartmouth College, amenities usually restricted to larger cities are easily accessible, such as fine dining, art museums, music, theater, division 1 athletics, and more. If you love the outdoors, look no further; hiking, skiing, swimming holes, and lakes, are all on your doorstep.
The Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center residency program offers a collegial and collaborative environment that promotes professional and personal growth. We offer a broad range of clinical training opportunities across several sites, including a tertiary medical center, state hospital, VA medical center, and community mental health centers. We offer advanced neuroscience and interventional psychiatry opportunities, such as ECT, TMS and esketamine, while also emphasizing the importance of psychotherapy. Our faculty are both distinguished and accessible, offering close mentorship and a clear love of teaching.
We are sorry that we cannot show you our program in person, but we hope you take the time to review our website. Please do not hesitate to be in touch with any questions. We look forward to hearing from you.
Gillian, Julie and Patrick
Welcome from the Chair
Thank you for your interest in the Department of Psychiatry at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center.
Training at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center is a rich opportunity to learn and grow. As a resident here, you will dive into psychiatry, surrounded by others who are committed to helping you gain expertise in this endlessly interesting and important field. The learning flows from our patients, our skilled, kind, enthusiastic faculty members, and from your remarkable fellow residents.
Our psychiatric residents come with talent then build on it to become strong clinicians and educators. All trainees are also introduced to translational psychiatric research and also to quality improvement leadership. Those who become intrigued have many opportunities to build their skills and experience in these areas.
Since we care about people who develop or live with psychiatric illnesses, your training really matters to us - our graduates spread out across the country improving lives over the decades that follow graduation.
We are delighted you are joining us in this important work and look forward meeting you.
William C. Torrey, MD
Raymond Sobel Professor and Chair, Department of Psychiatry, Dartmouth Health and Dartmouth’s Geisel School of Medicine
Welcome from the Chief Residents
Hello prospective applicants,
We are the co-chief residents for the 2023-2024 academic year and we are thrilled that you are interested in learning about our Psychiatry Residency program! Alisha is originally from California although moved frequently throughout her life. She is interested in working in an outpatient academic setting after residency and has a special interest in reproductive psychiatry. Zoey is from Minnesota. She is planning to work at the New Hampshire State Hospital next year.
Residents are drawn to Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center for many reasons, but the most resounding among them are the people and the culture of the program. We cannot say enough about the excellence of the clinical faculty at Dartmouth Hitchcock Medical Center, the White River Junction VA (including the National Center for PTSD), New Hampshire Hospital (the state hospital), and our community mental health centers. These institutions embody a passion for high quality patient care, mental health advocacy, and resident education and wellness. Every day, our faculty work to create an environment where residents feel challenged and supported to grow as clinicians, educators, researchers, and people. Central to this is the program’s commitment to soliciting resident feedback and incorporating recommended changes into all aspects of training—from didactics to call schedules. During our 3 years here, residents and program leadership have been involved in adjusting the call schedule at the VA to reflect resident preferences, improving documentation and systems workflows, shifting to a longitudinal versus block schedule experience in our specialty Geriatric and Mood Disorder clinics, and adding more emergency and geriatric psychiatry exposure to our first 2 years of training. The hospital itself has also undergone significant changes. We’ve established a dedicated psychiatric ED space and are working to renovate our inpatient units to include space for an expansion of 5 new beds. In an environment in which creativity is celebrated and all residents have the ability to make change, we have repeatedly been amazed by the work of our co-residents, who have started a Transgender Outpatient Consultation Clinic (which is now a core part of PGY-3 training), developed a therapeutic chatbot, created a Psychiatric Post-Acute COVID Syndrome Clinic, assisted in the creation of both an Asylum Clinic and a PANS/PANDAS Clinic, published in Nature, and worked to develop a more robust diversity, equity, and inclusion curriculum.
We believe our Psychiatry family is truly special. We cannot wait to meet you and show you more about what drew us to Dartmouth for our training and what is keeping us here after graduation. Please do not hesitate to reach out to either of us if you have any questions about your upcoming interview, what it is like to be a resident here, or how it is living in the Upper Valley!
Warmly,
Alisha Agrawal and Zoey Scharf