Central Texas Veterans Health Care System

Central Texas Veterans Health Care System is proud to participate in the teaching and training of tomorrow's mental health care professionals.  

• Psychotherapy supervision for psychiatry residents from Scott & White hospital. 

• The General Psychiatry Residency was started at Scott and White Memorial Hospital in 1993 by Jack Burke, Jr., MD, MPH.  He envisioned a community-based residency program with multiple training sites.  Residents would become knowledgeable in all aspects of psychiatry and especially community mental health.   The program became fully accredited by the  ACGME and “off it went!” 

  During Dr. Burke’s tenure, the program flourished and indeed “took off.”  The Psychiatry Residency is now fortunate to have Kathryn Kotrla, MD, as the chair of both the Scott and White and the VA Departments of Psychiatry.  Through the vision of Dr. Burke and Dr. Kotrla training sites are available at Scott and White Memorial Hospital in Temple, Texas, the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System (CTVHCS) and all of its various campuses throughout Central Texas, Darnall Army Community Hospital (DACH) in Killeen, and Central Counties Center for Mental Health and Mental Retardation and its five county service area.  Because of the wide array of training sites, residents are privileged to work with many different patient populations and different diagnostic groups and in many different systems of care.  Research opportunities reflect a wide range of resident and faculty interests.  Neuroanatomy in schizophrenia, biochemical treatments of serious mental illnesses, alternative/natural medications, and hypnosis in chronic pain syndromes are some of the areas of research being conducted by faculty and residents within the Department of Psychiatry.  Teaching within the various training sites also flourishes both for residents and medical students.  Recruitment continues to go well.  The program offers four PGY-1 positions and has filled them completely for the last three years with high quality applicants.  There is also a child psychiatry residency, which accepts two trainees per year (for a total complement of four residents).   
  
  The Psychiatry Residency is comprised of sixteen residents (four per year).  This allows residents to have close supervision, lots of interaction with faculty, and a sense of camaraderie not offered in larger programs.  There is little turnover among faculty and residents which would indicate satisfaction and “comfort” in the workplace.  The Central Texas area is a friendly one with little traffic, low cost-of-living, little crime, and ample recreation and community activities.  Larger metropolitan areas such as Austin and Dallas are one and two hours away, respectively. 
  
  For more information regarding the Psychiatry Residency Program, please contact Dorothy Winkler, Program Coordinator, or Dr. Gail Eisenhauer, Program Director, at 254-724-1768 or via email at dwinkler@swmail.sw.org.   There is also a Graduate Medical Education section at the Scott and White website which is www.sw.org.

• Mental health clinical rotations for medical students from Texas A&M University College of Medicine.  

• Doctoral-level clinical psychology internships and practicum placements. 

• The Austin Outpatient Clinic participates as a twelve-month training rotation for third-year psychiatry residents from the Austin Psychiatric Residency Program. 
  Residents are under the general supervision of staff psychiatrists for medical treatment of patients and may also be supervised by psychologists for individual psychotherapy.  The Austin Psychiatric Residency Program was launched at Austin State Hospital in 1955, the child psychiatry program in 1972.  Currently, the programs support 16 positions in general psychiatry and 6 in child and adolescent psychiatry.  Both programs are accredited by ACGME.  The clinical rotations include Austin State Hospital, Brackenridge Hospital, St. David's Pavilion, St. David's Hospital, Austin Children's Hospital, Shoal Creek Hospital, Department of Veterans Affairs, Austin Travis County MHMR, UT Counseling Center, Austin Child Guidance Center, Austin Children's Shelter and Bastrop Federal Correctional Institution.

  Neuropsychiatry Research 
  

  The Neuropsychiatry Research Program of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Science of the Texas A&M University System Health Sciences Center College of Medicine (TAMUSCOM) was founded in 1997 as a joint effort of Scott and White Hospital, the Central Texas Veterans Health Care System (CTVHCS) and the TAMUSCOM.  The Co-Directors of the Program, Dr. Keith Young, Dr. Paul Hicks and Dr. Ian Steele-Russell, oversee translational basic and clinical research with an emphasis on schizophrenia and other brain diseases.  The program has core facilities for stereological analysis of neuropathological tissue, immunohistochemistry, neurochemistry, behavioral pharmacology and clinical psychopharmacology trials.  The Program is one of sites for a VA Cooperative Study on the genetics of schizophrenia.  Future studies will further develop the Program's expertise in the genetics of schizophrenia and other brain diseases.

The Waco facility is also the location of the Center of Excellence for Research on Returning War Veterans.