Florida Atlantic University Charles E. Schmidt College of Medicine Program

Program Identity & Fit

FAU Psychiatry is a small, young, community-based residency built around a rotating consortium of Palm Beach County sites—Delray Medical Center/Fair Oaks Pavilion, Bethesda Hospital East, the West Palm Beach VA, and Rales Jewish Family Services—giving residents a heavily community and VA-based clinical population rather than a single tertiary academic hospital base. The program's stated strengths are geriatric psychiatry, addiction/dual-diagnosis care, consultation-liaison work, and neuromodulation (ECT, with over 1,300 treatments/year, and TMS), alongside unusually deep, structured longitudinal psychotherapy training in both psychodynamic and CBT modalities across all four years. Career orientation is explicitly framed as preparing residents for either private practice or fellowship, with a dedicated PGY-4 "Transition to Practice" seminar, rather than positioning itself as a research-generating academic pipeline; research exists through FAU's broader neuroscience/Brain Institute and Scripps/Max Planck affiliations but is elective and not embedded in the required curriculum. The program emphasizes clinical breadth across the lifespan, structured didactic progression, direct supervision, and comfort operating within a newer, intimate program culture rather than a large established academic department.