Psychiatry Residency

On behalf of the University of Kentucky College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry, we would like to thank you for your interest in our programs. With a strong commitment to education and comprehensive training and facilities, our goal is to train psychiatrists to practice in any clinical setting after graduation.

Residency Program

The residency program emphasizes the core competency areas of professionalism, medical knowledge, patient care, practice-based learning and improvement, and systems-based practice. Enthusiastic award-winning faculty present didactics. Psychotherapy training begins in the PGY-2 year. The program offers a wide variety of training sites including an academic health care complex, VA Hospital, state psychiatric hospital, community mental health training sites, UK Student Health Services, and more. Through training, residents work with health care professionals and students as we assist our residents in becoming effective teachers.

Structured Tracks and Elective Opportunities

The department’s residency program has many options through structured tracks and elective opportunities to tailor a residents training to help them prepare for their future careers. We offer an integrated child and adolescent psychiatry track that allows residents to match into both our psychiatry residency and child and adolescent fellowship at the same time, allowing for earlier exposure to pediatric patients and child and adolescent psychiatry. Applicants may apply to either the categorical or the integrated child and adolescent track, or they can apply to both programs. We also offer a clinical scholars track within the adult psychiatry program that provides protected research time and extra research mentorship for qualified residents with a strong interest in clinical research and academic psychiatry. Interested residents apply in the second half of their second year. The department also offers fellowships in child and adolescent psychiatry and addiction medicine. 

Rural Psychiatry

New in 2021, we have partnered with The Medical Center at Bowling Green and the UK College of Medicine-Bowling Green Campus to offer a community psychiatry track. Residents in this track do core rotations in Lexington but spend much of their training in Bowling Green, where they gain experience practicing psychiatry in a rural, underserved setting to learn how they can address an important need in the Commonwealth. 

Well-Rounded and Prepared

The department takes great pride in the collegial spirit between faculty and residents, and we encourage our residents to become active within our department and UK HealthCare. Our graduates practice across the U.S. in every type of setting imaginable and consistently vouch for how well we prepared them for their careers.

We are proud of our part in training psychiatrists for the future, and we look forward to showing you what residency training at the College of Medicine Department of Psychiatry can do for you.

Sandy Batsel-Thomas, MD
Residency Program Director
Director of Training and Education