Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship Program

Program Overview and Curriculum

Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship

The Westchester Medical Center Department of Psychiatry, affiliated with New York Medical College, offers two full-time one-year fellowships from July 1 to June 30. This is an ACGME-accredited C-L Psychiatry Fellowship. The fellowship offers a rich and highly diverse clinical experience.

Under supervision, fellows provide consultation for patients in all the medical-surgical wards—including the intensive care units, oncology, high risk OB/GYN, burn unit, transplant (heart, liver, and kidney), acute rehabilitation, palliative care, pain, geriatric and all trauma units. The fellows also participate actively in multi-disciplinary team rounds and family meetings. The goal of the fellowship is to prepare future Consultation-Liaison psychiatrists for academic careers and for working with highly challenging patient populations. The fellows gain skills in caring for complex patients who have multiple medical, social, and psychiatric problems, at times complicated by substance abuse, severe trauma, or loss.

Fellows work closely with the faculty, attending psychiatrists who are board-certified in C-L Psychiatry. The faculty supervises the fellows, who in turn supervise psychiatry residents, neurology residents and medical students. In addition to their clinical training, fellows receive a broad didactic experience, including lectures, reading seminars, weekly journal club, rounds, Grand Rounds, and case conferences. There are also opportunities for research.

The Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship at Westchester Medical Center offers the best of all worlds – an experienced and supportive faculty within a tertiary care hospital which offers an expansive breadth of available clinical experiences, thus allowing the fellow to tailor the educational experience to his/her interests. There is no call and no weekend coverage.

Training

The training on the C-L service is centered at Westchester Medical Center. The fellows are assigned consultations and are supervised by attendings who round on the patients with them. The fellows have opportunities to see outpatients, whether following patients from inpatient to outpatient settings or evaluating patients in the primary care clinic. In addition, the fellows rotate through different services and participate in psychosocial rounds. These services include palliative care, high risk OB, neurology, pain, burn, and liver, kidney and cardiac transplant.

The fellowship offers many areas in which the fellows can learn. There are different educational opportunities which include didactic classes, journal club, reading seminar, grand rounds and sitting on committees of the psychiatry department. Research opportunities are available in the department, allowing the fellow to participate in an ongoing project or pursue an area of individual interest. Fellows also have the opportunity to specialize in areas of interest during elective rotations. Support and assistance from faculty are available, as needed.

The fellows receive formative feedback on an on-going basis, as well as summative evaluation at the conclusion of each rotation. A comprehensive semi-annual evaluation is provided by the Program Director, inclusive of an assessment of the fellows’ competency-based milestones. It is the goal of the fellowship to prepare fellows for the rigors of academic careers as well as advancing their clinical growth. The fellows, in turn, provide feedback to the fellowship through program evaluations, supervisor evaluations and participating in the Annual Program Evaluation of the fellowship.

Our Clinical Locations

Westchester Medical Center

Westchester Medical Center shares its leafy campus with New York Medical College in Valhalla, NY, approximately 20 miles north of New York City. It is a Level 1 Trauma and Burn Center and a major hub for specialized care referrals. Here, we take care of patients from a very large catchment area stretching from the northern border of New York City to the Catskill Mountains.

Westchester Medical Center has a pediatric hospital (Maria Fareri Children’s Hospital) with eight dedicated pediatric operating rooms as well as many other non-operating room anesthetizing sites, including MRI, radiation and nuclear medicine, and endoscopy. The Ambulatory Care Pavilion, which opened in July 2019, added many anesthetizing locations, both OR and Non-OR. 

Construction is underway on the 128-bed state-of-the-art WMC Critical Care Tower, a $220 million project that when completed will span 162,000 square feet over five floors. Our caseload includes a full profile of cardiac, interventional pulmonary and thoracic, complex orthopedic, neurosurgical and solid organ transplant interventions, to name the busiest services. We have a large heart failure and ECMO referral program. Trauma orthopedics and surgery provide our residents a great variety of “open” cases. Residents participate in minimally invasive and robotic interventions in gynecologic-oncology, urology, colorectal, endocrine and thoracic surgery, as well as complex cardiac and neurological endovascular interventions, both pediatric and adult. The Acute and Chronic Pain Management care rotations cover both the pediatric and adult inpatients and outpatients, including complex consultations for patients in the Burn ICU.