Harvard Medical Psychiatry: Comprehensive Update 2024

2024 Course Overview

Medical Psychiatry is an exciting and rapidly growing field that is at the forefront of integrated medical and psychiatric practice in both the general hospital and outpatient settings. Providers specialize in the treatment of illness at the interface of medicine and psychiatry, including delirium, catatonia, neurocognitive disorders, and complications of psychiatric illness or interventions. There is a focus on the evaluation and comprehensive treatments including psychopharmacologic and psychological therapies of patients with neuropsychiatric symptoms that may result from medical, surgical, gynecologic and oncologic illness, as well as patients with primary psychiatric illness complicated by medical disease. This course is designed to enhance participants’ knowledge, skills for diagnostic work-up and treatment of patients suffering from both psychiatric and medical disorders. Faculty will review cutting-edge clinical research, evidence-based interventions and practical guidelines for the clinician. The course content will include the process of psychiatric assessment and consultation in the medical setting including novel deliveries of care, management of challenging neuropsychiatric presentations in the inpatient, emergency and outpatient settings, treatment of substance use in the medical setting and non-pharmacological interventions in Medical Psychiatry. We will discuss the management of patients in burn/trauma, neuropsychiatry, addiction, critical care, cardiology, oncology, transplant, women’s mental health and other areas. This course also provides an opportunity for comprehensive review before ABPN specialty boards exams. Learners will benefit from a variety of educational formats, including lectures, panel discussions, case discussions, question and answer sessions and electronic syllabus.

Who Should Attend

• Specialty Physicians
• Physicians Assistants
• Nurse Practitioners
• Psychologists
• Primary Care Physicians

Learning Objectives

Upon completion of this activity, participants will be able to:

• Evaluate relationships between medical and psychiatric subspecialties as they pertain to psychiatric manifestations in the medical setting.
• Generate clinically meaningful differential diagnoses when presented with neuropsychiatric symptoms in the medical setting.
• Provide an inter-professional team-based approach to the assessment and treatment of psychiatric symptoms in the medically ill.
• Utilize up-to-date diagnostic criteria and assessment methods to evaluate and monitor patients with psychiatric symptoms.
• Implement evidence-based treatment recommendations and monitor patient response.