About

Background

Welcome to The Hub – Psychiatry, the online resource and study guide for second and third year medical students learning about Psychiatry at the University of Toronto (U of T).

This online interactive tool was created in response to the student need for up to date, relevant and distilled resources to use for clinical reference and studying Psychiatry and Mental Health topics. This resource contains 18 essential topics or presenting complaints that a medical student is expected to encounter during their exposure to psychiatry.

For each topic there may be clinical cases, videos, PowerPoint presentations, clinical decision rules, guidelines, quizzes, and references to use for learning and self-assessment purposes.

This resource is not an all-encompassing syllabus. For third year medical students please use other sources to fully prepare for the Psychiatry examination (including lecture notes) as outlined on the Portal.

Content

All content that is referenced on the website other than videos and visual aids come from peer-reviewed journals and grey literature. Each of these articles/guidelines will be posted after copyright is obtained.

The Hub committee has been created for the monitoring of content and website maintenance. The Hub committee will consist of 1-2 faculty members, 1-2 resident representatives, 1-2 student representatives, and the Undergraduate Director. This committee will meet bimonthly and will meet more often if necessary.

In June of every year, each topic will be assigned to a faculty member for review. The Hub committee will then review each of the topics again for accuracy and relevance.

Proposals from outside the Hub committee for additions or changes of content will be categorized into:

  1. Additions or changes to existing topics
  2. New topics

Suggestions for additions or changes to existing topics can be submitted via the website under the Contact tab. This will go to The Hub committee for review.

The addition of a new topic will require the submission of a one-page proposal from the person proposing the topic. This proposal will contain:

  1. Topic objectives that align with the Psychiatry objectives.
  2. Rationale for addition of the topic.
  3. Suggested resources.
  4. A commitment to  ongoing monitoring of that topic.

These proposals will also go to committee for review.  If a proposal is accepted, a clear plan will be made on maintenance of this topic area.

The Hub committee with the Psychiatry Director as Chair, is ultimately responsible for the content of the website.

Links

Each link on the website will be checked to make sure they are working by the Administrative Assistant on a semi-annual basis or more often as necessary.

Process for Communication of Changes/Additions in Content

The website will indicate when the most recent and upcoming review will be for that content area.  The process for submitting changes/additions will be made clear on the About tab on the website.

Ownership

The website is owned by the Undergraduate Education Committee of Department of Psychiatry at the University of Toronto.

Acknowledgements to the Hub team: Drs. Boyle, Charach, Holiff, Leung, Monga, Rostas, Roy, Silverman, and Woodward for input, content development (quizzes, PowerPoint handouts, finding journal articles and grey literature), writing scripts, and participation in video production. Special thanks to Carrol Zhou our medical student representative.

Acknowledgements to the following colleagues for allowing their PowerPoint materials to be included on the Hub: Drs. Cohen, Giacobbe, Lofchy, Ravindran, Wiesenfeld, and Young.

Special thanks go to Farah Friesen for her dedication managing the administrative component of this program.
 

Raed Hawa, MD FRCPC DABPN DABSM
Associate Professor, Director of Undergraduate Medical Education, Department of Psychiatry, Deputy Clerkship Director, Faculty of Medicine, University of Toronto

Marcus Law, MD MBA MEd CCFP FCFP
Assistant Professor,
 Deputy Director of Preclerkship and Director of Academic Innovation
, Undergraduate Medical Education
, Faculty of Medicine
, University of Toronto