Psychiatry Residency Program

Welcome to Family Health Centers of San Diego’s (FHCSD) Psychiatry Residency Program and congratulations on pursuing your dream to become a psychiatrist — a field that is intellectually stimulating and helps individuals using an integration of psychotherapies and psychopharmacology.

Located in the City Heights neighborhood of San Diego, this new community-based training program offers psychiatric education and hands-on experience with training sites throughout San Diego County. Our program’s mission is to recruit, train and retain a diverse group of psychiatry physicians with a passion for providing caring, affordable, high-quality psychiatric care to the underserved. Despite being a new psychiatry training program, our clinic was founded in 1970 and has been providing training for University of California San Diego (UCSD) psychiatry residents, including those enrolled in their community psychiatry track and child and adolescent fellowship program. Our trainees will also have the opportunity to work with residents from other specialties, such as our FHCSD family medicine residents, those from the Scripps Mercy transitional year residency program, as well as pharmacy residents and advanced nurse practitioners, FNPs, PAs, MAs, nursing students, medical students, physical therapists and PT aids.

Our curriculum involves trainees’ rotating through state-of-the-art health care systems, namely Scripps Mercy Hospital (SMH) and Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital. Scripps Mercy Hospital is our main affiliate hospital and is recognized for high performance in 12 specialties, serving mainly the urban underserved population. Sharp is a nonprofit organization with multiple specialties and serves a major area in San Diego. Residents spend the majority of their two years at Scripps with some rotations during their second year at Sharp Mesa Vista Hospital. During the third and fourth years of training, residents rotate through FHCSD outpatient sites gaining experience in different subspeciality outpatient clinics.

We offer six residency spots per year with in-depth training. Enhancing leadership skills will occur through trainee’s involvement in quality improvement projects and potential for research and other scholarly activities that will be offered during training. Our program focuses on training future psychiatrists with a balance in both psychotherapeutic techniques, as well as psychopharmacology. In addition, our trainees will master their cultural psychiatry training through working with an ethnically diverse community, representing refugees and immigrants from Latino, Somali, Iraqi, Vietnamese and Cambodian backgrounds. Besides the diverse population that we serve, we offer training in children and adolescent psychiatry, women’s mental health, sports medicine, LGBTQ populations, individuals experiencing homelessness and those living with addiction. Our collaborative treatment programs with the family medicine residency offers strong opportunities for residents to learn from each other. Through these experiences, we aim to address health disparities of our community’s most vulnerable patients.

Our faculty is dedicated to teaching and creating a nurturing environment that promotes career development. Our curriculum enhances trainees’ experience in psychotherapy (i.e., psychodynamic psychotherapy, cognitive behavioral therapy, supportive therapy and EMDR, among other types of therapy), family and social therapies, as well as biological psychiatry. We have designed our evidence-based curriculum with the aim of focusing on a well-balanced educational program, integrated with focus on each residents’ wellness. In addition to the training environment, San Diego offers great weather, outdoor activities, such as water sports (i.e., scuba diving, snorkeling, surfing, kayaking and boating), amusement parks (i.e., Sea World, Lego Land and San Diego Zoo), hiking, museums and others. If you have children, San Diego has some of the best schools in the nation. We are certain that our program will offer you a balanced education in a fun environment. We expect residents who are motivated to make a difference in individuals and health care through their work in the community psychiatry setting.

We look forward to receiving and reviewing your application!

Karim Ghobrial-Sedky, M.D.
Program Director, Psychiatry Residency Program

Related News

• Press Release: FHCSD is Third Psychiatry Residency Program to Receive ACGME Accreditation in San Diego

Employee Vaccination

The COVID-19 vaccine is required for all new staff members, effective August 1, 2021. Exceptions will be considered for disability or medical conditions, or sincerely held religious beliefs. Family Health Centers of San Diego is taking this necessary step to keep the patients we serve and the people we work with safe.