Medical Education US

I'm currently in the process of interviewing for medical schools and the posts have been extremely helpful! I have a lot of experience working with children and am interested in possibly becoming a child psychiatrist. I know that child and adolescent psychiatry requires an additional board certification (i think) and was wondering if someone could fill me in on the additional training to become a child psychiatrist.

Also, for the residents and doctors, how much of your time do you have directly interacting with the patients. I have read numerous articles about psychiatrists mostly being called on to run around and proscribe medicine in 5 minutes or less (exaggeration) so I'm concerned about the amount of interaction I'll be able to have as a physician.

Finally, does anyone have an opinion on the current state of psychiatry? I know that the profession is still pushing to validate its credibility but is the field moving and expanding as quickly as it seems to be?

I would appreciate any feedback. Thank you!

I work as a professional in the Mental Health field and I can tell you that upstate NY is in need of child psychiatry. We have wonderful programs for child with mental healh needs but not enough child psychiatrists. Its a huge need so I would tell you to go for the child psychiatrist position, you won't ever lack a job. Also, I do believe that if you prefer to take time with your patients than that is how you can operate. Some other psychiatrists that have since retired have had such good relations with their patients on taking the time to explain medications and to know them. Person-centered treatment is here and will force more interactions and focus on the strengths of the client. Good Luck!

If you want to become a child-psychiatrist, there a few different options; however the standard route is to complete a general psychiatry residency and then follow up with a fellowship in Child and adolescent Psychiatry. This results in a 4 year general psychiatry resident followed by a 2 year child fellowship.

Another route you may not know, is that midway through the general psychiatry residency you can apply for the child fellowship and often times your residency will accept the first year of your fellowship as credit for the last year of your residency. This shortens the total number of years by one year

The above track can also be applied to and gauranteed in many residencies when you finish medical school.

Lastly, there are a 9 or 10 different residency programs that you apply to directly following medical school and that will certify you in pediatrics, psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry.

Sincerely,
somoene applying for peds / psych / child this year

Wow - I'm surprised there are 9 or 10 programs in peds / psych / child-psych. I actually interviewed at a few of those, let's see.... about 10 years ago now! I actually ranked a combination of med-psych programs as well as peds/psych/child psych programs.

For Triple Board programs, I interviewed at Indiana, Cincinnati, and Kentucky. All were decent programs, with different strengths and weaknesses.

Anyway - good luck to you in your applications!

I am interested in Triple Board, as well. There are currently 10 programs in the country which offer this training option. They are:

Brown U - Providence, RI
Tufts U - Boston, MA
U of Utah - Salt Lake City, UT
U of Cincinnati - Cincinnati, OH
Mount Sinai - New York, NY
U of Hawaii - Honolulu, HI (hmmmmmm...)
U of Kentucky - Lexington, KY
Indiana U - Indianapolis, IN
U of Pittsburgh - Pittsburgh, PA
Tulane U - New Orleans, LA
More details on (and links to) each program are available at www.tripleboard.org

Triple Board is a 5 year residency program, and from what I have seen the breakdown is generally 2 years full-time Peds, and 1.5 years each full-time Psych and Child/Adolescent Psych (combined in some sort of permutation, they are not always in the same order). The training overlap between the specialties makes up the difference in time, from what I have been told.

This option sounds fascinating to me, as I am reluctant to completely divorce myself from the physical side of medicine, but the interface between physical and psychiatric is right up my alley! Also, if you are board-certified in three specialties you have some pretty broad options for your eventual professional practice.

There are also a number of combined Family Medicine/Psychiatry residencies available.