Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship

Resident and fellow education is a clear priority at Jackson Memorial Hospital and specifically for our program. CAP fellows have protected didactic education in two separate lecture blocks on Thursday and Friday afternoons from 12:30 to 2:30 p.m. Second year fellows have an additional lecture block on Tuesday mornings which encompasses dialectical behavioral therapy as well as consultation-liaison training. The lecture schedule is specifically planned out for the year and includes all aspects of relevant medical knowledge for child and adolescent psychiatrists such as development, psychopathology, psychotherapy and psychopharmacology. Fellows are expected to attend all lectures and participate in reading and discussion. Faculty are expected to provide one-on-one teaching during clinical supervision and inpatient supervision rounds.

Departmental grand rounds or child and adolescent psychiatry rounds (which includes case conferences, ethics rounds and journal club) are held on Wednesdays from 12 to 1:30 p.m. The department is lucky to have a very active grand rounds schedule, with many prominent adult, child and adolescent psychiatrists speaking on cutting-edge topics throughout the year.

The first year of the fellowship is split into two parts – inpatient and outpatient experiences. All fellows rotate on the inpatient CAP psychiatric unit for a minimum of five months during their first year of fellowship. In this setting, fellows develop knowledge and skills to interview, evaluate and manage very complicated child and adolescent psychiatric patients. They learn to manage acute psychiatric symptoms in very sick children and teens, and how to work effectively as a team. There is also a two to four month Crisis Rotation, during which fellows learn how to do rapid evaluations of youth with psychiatric emergencies. During this rotation, fellows learn how to triage and accept transfers from outside hospitals, as well as learn how to determine which patients meet criteria for inpatient hospitalization and which can be safely discharged.

During the other half of the first year, fellows spend five to six months in the CAP outpatient clinic. Goals of this rotation are to learn to evaluate, diagnose, treat and monitor children and adolescents with neuropsychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. One day a week is spent in the Developmental Disabilities Clinic under the supervision of a faculty expert, providing fellows with an opportunity for in-depth learning about youth and young adults with Intellectual Disabilities and Autism Spectrum Disorder.

An important goal for this first year is for fellows to have the opportunity to follow at least some of their patients longitudinally over the two-year fellowship. All fellows are assigned at least three to four patients for psychotherapy during their first year of training.

The second year of fellowship is primarily based in the outpatient setting. Fellows are expected to conduct intake evaluations in the outpatient clinic and follow an increasing number of children and adolescents with psychiatric and neurodevelopmental disorders. Fellows also rotate on a semester-basis through the UM Student Affairs Counseling Center and through the DBT program at Jackson Memorial Hospital. These rotations provide exposure to youth with more complex problems, and a different and more varied sociodemographic and socioeconomic background.

Fellows also spend two to three months on consultation-liaison psychiatry, working with medically complex patients at both Holtz Children’s Hospital and Ryder Trauma Center at Jackson Memorial Hospital. Additionally, fellows rotate through the Debbie School – a preschool on campus with both typical and atypical developing children, and observe comprehensive evaluations of preschool children at the UHealth Mailman Center for Child Development in the Department of Pediatrics at UM Leonard M. Miller School of Medicine. The second year also provides an opportunity to learn about research and develop a project under the supervision of a faculty mentor, culminating in a presentation at the end of the year.

Eligible applicants interested in a more research-focused fellowship will have the opportunity to participate in a CAP fellowship research track.