Mastering Your Med Psych Residency CV: A Comprehensive Guide

Understanding the Medicine-Psychiatry CV: What Makes It Different?

A strong CV is more than a list of achievements—it’s a strategic narrative that connects your experiences to what Medicine-Psychiatry (Med-Psych) programs value. Combined medicine psychiatry residencies look for applicants who can bridge biological, psychological, and social perspectives, manage complex comorbidity, and thrive in interdisciplinary systems.

What Med-Psych Programs Are Looking For

While every program is unique, most Med-Psych residency directors consistently value:

• Clear commitment to combined training
  • Evidence you understand what medicine psychiatry combined practice looks like
  • Experiences that demonstrate interest in both internal medicine and psychiatry
• Clinical maturity and adaptability
  • Comfort with medically and psychiatrically complex patients
  • Ability to work in fast-paced, high-acuity environments
• Systems thinking and integration
  • Interest in integrated care, CL (consult-liaison) psychiatry, collaborative care models
  • Understanding of health systems, social determinants, and multidisciplinary work
• Communication and collaboration
  • Teamwork with diverse professionals (nursing, social work, psychology)
  • Teaching, leadership, or advocacy experiences
• Scholarly curiosity
  • QI projects, research, or scholarly presentations—especially at the medicine–psychiatry interface

Your CV should make it easy for reviewers to see:

1. that you understand what med psych residency entails, and
2. that your background already points in that direction.

CV vs. Resume vs. ERAS Application

For residency, especially in the U.S., your primary “CV” is your ERAS application, but many situations still call for a formal CV:

• Some Med-Psych programs request an uploaded CV in addition to ERAS
• Research mentors, letter writers, and away rotation preceptors often ask for a CV
• You’ll need a CV for scholarship applications, conferences, and early career jobs

Think of your medical student CV as the complete, master document of your academic and clinical life. ERAS is a formatted, slightly condensed version of that information.

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Core Structure: How to Build a CV for Med-Psych Residency

There is no single universal structure, but using a clear, logical format helps program directors quickly find what they need. Below is a widely accepted order with a Med-Psych–specific lens.

1. Header and Contact Information

Keep this clean and professional:

• Full name (bolded, slightly larger font)
• MD/DO candidate, Class of 20XX (optional but helpful)
• Email (professional), mobile phone, city/state
• Optional: LinkedIn or professional website (only if up-to-date and relevant)

Avoid:

• Nicknames, personal photos, or multiple email addresses
• Including full mailing address (city and state are typically enough now)

Example (text-only style):
Alexandra Rivera, MS4
MD Candidate, Class of 2026 – University of X School of Medicine
Email: alexandra.rivera@medschool.edu | Phone: (555) 555-1234 | City, State

2. Education

List in reverse chronological order:

• Medical school
• Graduate degrees (MPH, MSc, etc.)
• Undergraduate degree

Include:

• Institution name, city, state/country
• Degree earned or expected
• Graduation date (month/year) or “Expected Month Year”
• Honors (e.g., “Graduated magna cum laude,” “Honors in Psychology”)

This section is straightforward—no bullet points needed.

3. Examination Scores & Certifications (Optional on Formal CV)

While ERAS locally stores USMLE/COMLEX scores, a stand-alone CV may include:

• USMLE/COMLEX with step/level and pass status (omit actual scores if you prefer)
• Other certifications:
  • ACLS, BLS
  • Language proficiency certifications
  • Research ethics (CITI), if relevant

Format clearly:

• USMLE Step 1 – Passed (Month Year)
• USMLE Step 2 CK – Scheduled (Month Year)

If you had a delay or unique testing story, keep the CV neutral; explanation belongs in your personal statement or advisor conversations, not in this section.

4. Clinical Experience (Beyond Standard Clerkships)

Med-Psych programs especially care about how you’ve engaged with both medicine and psychiatry.

This section may include:

• Sub-internships (Sub-Is/Acting Internships)
• Away rotations (especially Med-Psych, CL psychiatry, addiction medicine)
• Longitudinal clinics or student-run free clinics
• Integrated primary care or collaborative care experiences
• Relevant pre-clinical experiences with significant patient interaction

Each entry should have:

• Role/title
• Site/institution, city, state
• Dates (Month Year–Month Year)
• 2–4 bullet points emphasizing responsibilities and impact

Focus bullets on:

• Complex comorbidity: Medically ill patients with psychiatric issues, or vice versa
• Systems integration: Work with social work, therapists, addiction services, etc.
• Population focus: Homelessness, SMI (serious mental illness), chronic disease, substance use, geriatric, adolescent

Example entry (strong Med-Psych emphasis):

Clinical Rotation – Medicine-Psychiatry Sub-Internship
University Hospital, Department of Medicine-Psychiatry, City, State
July 2025 – August 2025

• Managed a panel of 6–8 inpatients daily on a combined medicine psychiatry unit caring for patients with acute psychosis and decompensated heart failure, DKA, or infections.
• Collaborated with interdisciplinary teams (nursing, social work, PT/OT, addiction specialists) to create integrated care plans addressing both medical stabilization and psychiatric safety.
• Led brief psychoeducation sessions for patients and families about delirium, medication adherence, and coping with chronic mental illness in the context of chronic medical conditions.

This isn’t the place for every core clerkship description. Instead, highlight select experiences that best demonstrate your combined medicine-psychiatry interest and skills.

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Highlighting Your Medicine-Psychiatry Focus: Key CV Sections

5. Research and Scholarly Activity

You do not need a PhD or numerous first-author papers to match Med-Psych, but you should demonstrate intellectual curiosity and, ideally, some engagement with questions relevant to Med-Psych.

Types of acceptable scholarly work:

• Classic clinical or bench research
• Quality improvement (QI) and patient safety projects
• Education research (curriculum on integrated care, for example)
• Case reports or case series (especially psych-medically complex cases)
• Poster or oral presentations
• Book chapters, narrative pieces, or blogs (if peer-reviewed or clearly scholarly)

Organize in subheadings when possible:

• Peer-Reviewed Publications
• Abstracts & Presentations
• Quality Improvement Projects
• Other Scholarly Work

For each item:

• Authors (Your name bolded if allowed in format)
• Title
• Journal or conference name
• Date and location (for presentations)
• “In progress,” “Submitted,” or “Accepted” status clearly labeled

Example Med-Psych–focused QI project entry:

Quality Improvement Project
“Improving Metabolic Monitoring for Patients with Serious Mental Illness Admitted to the Inpatient Medicine Service”
University Hospital, Department of Internal Medicine – QI Initiative
Project Lead: August 2024 – May 2025

• Led a multidisciplinary team to design and implement an EHR best-practice alert for HbA1c and lipid screening among patients on antipsychotic medications admitted to general medicine floors.
• Achieved a 35% increase in adherence to metabolic monitoring guidelines over 6 months.

Even if your research is not directly in med psych, show transferable skills: managing data, collaborating in teams, presenting results, and understanding evidence-based practice.

6. Teaching, Leadership, and Advocacy

Med-Psych programs value residents who can teach, lead, and advocate, especially for vulnerable and complex populations.

Include roles such as:

• Student group leadership (Psych SIG, Internal Medicine Society, addiction interest group, Med-Psych interest group if your school has one)
• Teaching assistant positions (anatomy, clinical skills, behavioral health)
• Peer tutor or board prep tutor
• Committee roles (curriculum committee, wellness, diversity and inclusion)
• Volunteer leadership (shelter clinics, harm reduction programs, mental health outreach)

For each role:

• Position title
• Organization, institution, location
• Dates
• 2–3 bullets focusing on:
  • Scope (who you led or taught)
  • Outcomes (new curricula, events, attendance, feedback)
  • Relevance to Med-Psych (e.g., integrated care themes, dual diagnoses, SUD treatment)

Example:

Co-Leader – Medicine-Psychiatry Student Interest Group
University of X School of Medicine, City, State
January 2024 – Present

• Organized a 4-part noon conference series on integrated care models, featuring Med-Psych faculty, addiction specialists, and CL psychiatrists.
• Coordinated a mentorship program connecting 20 pre-clinical students with Med-Psych residents and faculty.
• Co-developed a half-day workshop on managing delirium, agitation, and medical comorbidity on general hospital wards.

7. Volunteer and Community Service

This is particularly important in a medical student CV for Med-Psych because it can demonstrate:

• Longitudinal commitment to underserved or high-risk populations
• Comfort working with individuals facing mental illness, substance use, homelessness, trauma, or chronic medical disease
• Cultural humility and trauma-informed approaches

Highlight:

• Mental health helplines or crisis text services
• Street medicine, homeless outreach, harm reduction
• Refugee or immigrant health programs
• Peer counseling or wellness initiatives
• Correctional health, community mental health, or addiction services

Tight, focused bullet points work best:

• “Provided weekly mental health screening (PHQ-9, GAD-7) and blood pressure checks at a student-run free clinic, coordinating referrals for high-risk patients to community psychiatry and primary care clinics.”

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Strategic Emphasis: Making Your CV Read as “Med-Psych”

You don’t need every line item to scream “medicine psychiatry combined,” but you do want a strong overall pattern.

1. Curate, Don’t Just List

A common mistake in CV building for residency is thinking more is always better. For Med-Psych:

• Prioritize experiences that show:

  • Interest in both IM and psychiatry
  • Work with high medical and psychiatric complexity
  • Involvement in systems-based care and integrated models

• De-emphasize or shorten:

  • Brief, unrelated high school activities
  • One-day volunteer events without real connection
  • Non-medical jobs unless they show core skills (e.g., crisis counseling, social services)

Your CV should still be complete, but space and detail should reflect what matters for your specialty.

2. Use Language That Signals a Combined Perspective

Where appropriate, your bullet points should integrate both domains:

Instead of:

• “Conducted psychiatric evaluations on clinic patients.”

Try:

• “Conducted integrated psychiatric and medical evaluations for patients with severe depression and diabetes, coordinating with primary care to adjust both antidepressant and antihyperglycemic regimens.”

Instead of:

• “Volunteered at health fair doing blood pressure screening.”

Try:

• “Provided blood pressure screening and brief counseling on stress, sleep, and substance use at community health fairs, identifying patients in need of both primary care and mental health follow-up.”

This doesn’t mean forcing psych language into every bullet. Rather, where it’s honest and accurate, connect the medical and psychiatric elements.

3. Align with Common Med-Psych Career Interests

Med-Psych residents often pursue:

• CL psychiatry
• Integrated primary care models
• Addiction medicine/psychiatry
• Psychosomatic medicine
• Chronic disease + SMI management
• Hospital medicine with psychiatric expertise

If your interests trend in these directions, shape your CV to show:

• Project topics (e.g., depression in COPD, alcohol use and cirrhosis)
• Populations served (e.g., patients with SMI, chronic pain, or substance use)
• Systems experience (e.g., EHR tools, liaison roles, collaborative teams)

You are not locking in your entire career path by having a theme, but programs like to see a coherent direction.

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Formatting, Length, and Presentation: Residency CV Tips

Overall Length and Detail

For residency applications, a typical comprehensive CV for a graduating medical student is:

• 2–4 pages for most applicants
• Up to 5–6 pages if you have significant prior degrees, careers, or publications

Red flags for reviewers:

• 1-page CV that looks like a generic pre-med resume (too sparse)
• 8+ pages with verbose descriptions for every activity you’ve ever done (too bloated)

Aim for concise but descriptive entries. If you’re wondering whether to include something, ask:

1. Does this add to my narrative as a medicine-psychiatry applicant?
2. Does it show meaningful responsibility, leadership, or skill?
3. Is it redundant with other, stronger entries?

Consistent, Professional Formatting

• Use one clean, readable font (e.g., Calibri, Garamond, Arial, Times New Roman)
• Font size ~11–12 point; headings slightly larger
• Consistent date formatting (e.g., “August 2022 – May 2023” throughout)
• Left-align text; avoid complex columns that may break in upload systems
• Use bold and italics sparingly (for role titles, institutions, or your name in references)

Avoid:

• Colors, creative fonts, graphics, or headshots
• Excessive underlining or italics that reduce readability

Common Sections to Consider (and Where They Fit)

After the major sections above, you can include:

• Honors & Awards
  • Dean’s list, honor societies (e.g., AOA, Gold Humanism), scholarships
• Professional Memberships
  • APA, ACP, Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry, specialty interest groups
• Skills & Languages
  • Language proficiency (with level: fluent, professional working, basic)
  • Special skills: SPSS, R, qualitative analysis, medical Spanish, motivational interviewing workshop training
• Interests (Optional)
  • Very brief; can humanize you.
  • E.g., “Long-distance running, narrative nonfiction, jazz piano”
  • Avoid controversial items; keep it professional yet authentic.

Updating Over Time

Think of your CV as a living document:

• Start in M1 or earlier and update every 3–4 months
• Add new rotations, projects, and presentations as they happen
• Keep a “master CV” with full detail, then trim or tailor as needed for different uses (residency, research, scholarships)

For ERAS, you will adapt this document, but having a strong master CV makes ERAS much easier and more accurate.

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Putting It All Together: Example Applicant Profiles

Example 1: Traditional Student with Targeted Med-Psych Experiences

• Solid performance in both IM and psychiatry clerkships
• Completed:
  • Medicine Sub-I
  • Psychiatry CL elective
  • Medicine-Psychiatry away rotation
• One QI project on screening for depression in CHF clinic
• Volunteer experience at homeless shelter clinic

CV emphasis:

• Detailed entries for Med-Psych experiences with integrated language
• QI project featured under “Scholarly Activity” showing collaboration between cardiology and psychiatry
• Leadership in a mental health advocacy student group
• Shorter entries for less-related activities

Example 2: Non-Traditional Applicant with Prior Career

• Prior career as a social worker before medical school
• Research in addiction medicine
• Experience running groups for patients with SMI

CV emphasis:

• “Prior Professional Experience” section placed high on CV to highlight social work career
• Bullet points tailored to show systems navigation, interprofessional work, and mental health expertise integrated with healthcare
• Research and QI clearly presented as building toward future Med-Psych work
• Core IM and psychiatry clerkships and electives framed as bringing medical depth to existing psychosocial expertise

In both examples, the goal is a clear, coherent story: this applicant understands and is committed to medicine psychiatry combined training.

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Frequently Asked Questions About Med-Psych CVs

1. Do I need Med-Psych–specific research to match a Med-Psych residency?

No. Many successful applicants have little or no explicitly Med-Psych research. What matters is:

• Some evidence of scholarly engagement (QI, research, presentations)
• Ability to talk thoughtfully about clinical questions and evidence
• A pattern of experiences that show genuine interest in both internal medicine and psychiatry

If you do have Med-Psych–relevant projects (e.g., delirium, SMI with chronic disease, integrated care), highlight them clearly, but they are not mandatory.

2. How do I handle gaps, leaves, or career changes on my CV?

Always be honest and neutral:

• Include the dates clearly
• For non-medical gaps (e.g., illness, family responsibilities), you don’t need detailed explanations on the CV itself
• For major career changes, briefly describe the prior role under “Professional Experience” and focus on transferable skills (communication, crisis management, teamwork)

A more nuanced explanation belongs in:

• Your personal statement
• An advisor’s note (if applicable)
• In-person conversations, if asked

The CV’s job is to provide accurate, neutral facts in a professional format.

3. How many pages is too long for a CV at the medical student level?

For residency applications:

• 2–4 pages is ideal for most medical student CVs
• 5–6 pages can be appropriate if you have:
  • Prior graduate degrees
  • Multiple publications/presentations
  • A substantive prior career

If you’re exceeding that, look carefully for:

• Redundancy
• Overly detailed bullet points for minor roles
• Outdated experiences from high school that add little value

4. Should I tailor my CV differently for Med-Psych vs. categorical Medicine or Psychiatry applications?

If you’re applying to both:

• Maintain one master CV, but you can slightly reorder or rephrase for different uses.
• For Med-Psych:
  • Emphasize integrated care, complex comorbidity, and systems-based projects
  • Highlight experiences where you clearly bridged medicine and psychiatry
• For categorical IM or psych:
  • Shift emphasis slightly to that specialty’s typical priorities
  • But retaining your integrated focus can still be a strength

On ERAS, your experiences will be the same, but you can use experience descriptions and your personal statement to adjust emphasis for Med-Psych vs. categorical programs.

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A thoughtfully constructed CV is one of the most powerful tools you have as a Medicine-Psychiatry applicant. By curating your experiences, using integrated language, and presenting your story clearly, you help programs quickly see why you are well-matched for the unique challenges—and rewards—of med psych residency.