About the Program

This fellowship integrates the history of the biopsychosocial model with cutting edge work in consultation subspecialties. Our strengths are in inpatient consultation, psychiatry in medicine and collaborative care, transplant psychiatry, and other sub-specialty consultation.

  There are required rotations as well as many opportunities for electives based on fellow interest.  Educational offerings include a weekly didactic series, monthly journal club as well as the weekly departmental grand rounds.  The fellow is also heavily involved in teaching medical students and residents.  Consultation-Liaison fellows are also required to complete a scholarly activity suitable for a poster presentation, which is included at the Department's Annual Poster Day.
 

Required Rotations

Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service

The Psychiatric Consultation-Liaison Service (PCLS) provides over 1800 consultations annually to Strong Memorial Hospital (SMH), the center of the University of Rochester Medical Center  (URMC) health care delivery system. Strong Memorial has 886 patient beds and approximately 1400 full-time faculty members and 650 voluntary clinical faculty members organized into 32 departments and centers. It is the only Level 1 Trauma Center and quaternary care center in the region. The service operates both a traditional consultation model and a Proactive model. The service is staffed by psychiatrists and advanced practice nurses, and provides training to PGY-2 residents, Neurology and other residents, and medical students. While on this service, the Fellow will provide inpatient consultations and help train residents and students. The fellow will also have the opportunity to participate in telepsychiatry consultations to URMC-affiliated regional hospitals and Emergency rooms.

Transplant Psychiatry

Organ Transplant is a signature program of URMC, offering liver, kidney and heart transplantation. Annually, there are 150-200 transplants in these programs. In addition, there is a robust VAD program, following over 200 VAD patients. Transplant Psychiatry has a full-time consultative presence in these programs. The clinical work occurs in inpatient and outpatient settings, and involves candidacy assessments of both recipients and donors, consultative short-term management of psychiatric issues, assessment and management of delirium, and helping patients and families with emotional adjustment when dealing with worsening health and also during recuperation. The Fellow will participate in recipient listing and donor evaluation committee meetings.

The Medicine In Psychiatry Service (MIPS)

This is an inpatient medical unit housed within the Psychiatry area of URMC that is designed to care for patients who are medically ill and also have significant psychiatric illness. It is staffed by a team of primary care physicians interested in the biopsychosocial approach to patients, and has a dedicated psychiatrist that rounds with the medical teams and provides consultation. The unit additionally has Psychology presence. It is one of the few units of its kind in the entire country. In addition, MIPS has a community-based outpatient practice located next door to the Strong Ties program, an outpatient clinic for patients with serious mental illness. An important aspect of this rotation is learning about and experiencing an embedded model of psychiatric care.

Collaborative and Integrated Care

The Department of Psychiatry provides psychiatric care in a variety of Internal Medicine and Family Medicine practices, both large and small, located throughout Rochester and the region.  There are multiple different models used depending on the site including the IMPACT model and co-located care in addition to using multiple modalities including teleconsultations and e-consults.  By being exposed to different models of integration and to different practices throughout the region, the Fellow can explore not only the clinical work in differing patient populations, but also how various care models can work.

Electives

While the fellow will have experiences with these subspecialties on the inpatient consultations service, they can choose to do a more longitudinal outpatient experience in the following areas:

Pain Management

The URMC Pain Treatment Center, part of Strong Memorial Hospital, offers a multidisciplinary approach that includes psychological, behavioral and rehabilitative care. This outpatient rotation offers the opportunity for the Fellow to learn about assessing pain while better understanding pain syndromes and treatment options, both pharmacological and non-pharmacological.

Neurology

Opportunities are available for outpatient consultation in multiple subspecialty areas of Neurology including in Epilepsy, Movement Disorders, and Headache. There is a CL psychiatrist that works with the Movement Disorders group. The Epilepsy Center is the only certified, level 4 Epilepsy Center in the region. The emphasis of this rotation is on somatic symptom disorders, working with the Epilepsy Center’s dedicated psychologist.

Other Experiences

In addition to these electives, the Fellowship is interested in providing its Fellows with experiences in areas that are of interest. Because URMC is an integrated academic health center that has specialists in every area of medicine (including featured areas such as Neuromedicine (Neurology and Neurosurgery), Heart and Vascular Care, Primary Care, Cancer Care, Diabetes, and others), other electives can be arranged, through discussions with the Program Director.