- College of Medicine Faculty News Student Affairs
Dr. Marcy Verduin, the College of Medicine’s associate dean for students, has received her second prestigious psychiatry honor of the year, and was honored as a Distinguished Fellow of the American College of Psychiatrists at the group’s February 2015 national meeting. Last summer, Dr. Verduin was named a Distinguished Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association. Both fellowships honor her significant contributions to the field of psychiatry in education, research and patient care.
In addition to serving as a dean, Dr. Verduin is a professor of psychiatry at the College of Medicine and a practicing psychiatrist at the Orlando VA Medical Center. As a clinician and researcher, she specializes in the mental health needs of homeless veterans suffering from addictions.
Dr. Verduin was first elected to the American College of Psychiatrists in 2009. The college each year selects a limited number of physicians as Distinguished Fellows who are nominated based on their activity in psychiatric teaching, research and patient care and their sustained contributions to the field. “I am quite honored to be selected,” she said. “I believe this kind of recognition says a lot about UCF and how we are viewed nationally as a new medical school on the cutting edge of medical education.”
She believes psychiatry is playing a bigger role in medical education as the healthcare profession puts more emphasis on the behavioral and psychosocial sciences and communication between patient and provider. As medical schools focus more on interprofessional training and team-building between medical professionals, the ability for doctors to communicate and connect with others is more important than ever before, she said. “As psychiatrists, we generally have a strength in communication and relationship building,” she said, “and those traits are key in an integrated curriculum that is teaching people to work in teams.”
Part of that medical training also involves testing, and in the past year, Dr. Verduin has received another honor in that area. She was selected as an associate editor for the Psychiatry Resident-In-Training Exam (PRITE), given each year to psychiatry residents to show they have achieved competency to practice in the field. This year, the American College of Psychiatrists increased its number of PRITE associate editors from four to five and selected Dr. Verduin to work with the editor-in-chief to create the exam. Once known as “The Four Tops,” the five associate editors are now known as “The High Fives.”