The Royal Columbian Hospital and Surrey Memorial Hospital are the two largest Regional Hospitals in Fraser Health and are the sites for Year 3 Psychiatry MSI/Clerkship Core Rotations for UBC Medical Students. Both hospitals offer broad and diverse clinical experiences with excellent exposure to all major areas of psychopathology. SMH has the busiest Psychiatric Emergency Department in B.C., with 5,700 psychiatry patients seen last year.

For medical students interested in postgraduate residency training in Psychiatry, doing your Psychiatry rotation at RCH or SMH provides an opportunity to spend time in the two hospitals where the Fraser Health Greater Vancouver UBC Psychiatry Residency Program is based.

More recently, Burnaby Hospital is also an up and coming site for third year medical students to do their core psychiatry rotation in their rotating clerkship.  This site offers some unique opportunities as outlined below.

Royal Columbian Hospital

The Royal Columbian Hospital is one of the most highly-rated psychiatry teaching sites in the UBC system, and offers Year 3 Psychiatry Rotations with a variety of clinical experiences including — Inpatients, Outpatients, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, Geriatrics and Emergency Psychiatry. You will work closely with your staff psychiatrist, as well as Psychiatry residents at various levels of training. This site is well-known for its focus on hands-on learning, collegial working relationships, and its well-developed educational program for MSIs.

In addition to a broad clinical experience, our formal education series includes Grand Rounds, Journal Club Rounds, Chief Resident Rounds (Core Topics for medical students), Psychotherapy Rounds (with a focus on CBT), Clinical Case Conference Rounds, Psych Jeopardy! Quiz Show, and a Psychiatric Interviewing Course.

Surrey Memorial Hospital

Surrey Memorial Hospital prides itself on being able to offer a rich, hands-on clinical experience to our students, by virtue of being one of the busiest psychiatry departments in the country as well as having a team of staff psychiatrists who are enthusiastic about education. The Year 3 Core Clinical Psychiatry rotation will familiarize students with clinical psychiatric care in inpatient and outpatient settings, and with emergency psychiatry. Child and adolescent psychiatry and adult psychiatry are both offered on site. Our staff work in a diverse range of fields, which allows us to offer a varied selection of clinics such as community mental health, reproductive mental health, primary-care psychiatry clinic (using a shared-care model), adolescent crisis response team and child neuropsychiatry clinic.

Formal teaching presently includes monthly journal club, psychopharmacology rounds, and clinical case conference rounds. Our academic series will evolve further as we welcome core psychiatry and family practice residents to Surrey Memorial Hospital.

Burnaby Hospital

Burnaby Hospital is a busy site for psychiatry.  It is one of the first hospitals in the lower mainland to integrate community mental health with hospital psychiatric programs.  As such, the mental health wing of the hospital comprise of both the inpatient ward as well as the mental health centre situated in the same building.

Students that come through this site will have a blended day of mix in and out patient experiences as well as consult liason experiences in addition to day time emergency call.  This is a unique model that is not seen in many UBC teaching sites.  Students will also get exposure to ECT.

Educational activities for medical students is set into the rotation schedule with seminars delivered by staff, resident and also allied health professional that cover a wide variety of topics in psychiatry.

How to Choose a Psychiatry Rotation at Fraser Health

Site preferences for Psychiatry rotations are made at the beginning of 3rd Year and placements are determined by a rank-order lottery by the Undergraduate Psychiatry Education Office. Please direct inquiries to:

Undergraduate Psychiatry Program Manager
UGE.progmgr@ubc.ca