I'll be applying to psych programs in a little over a year and had a question about the limits of a general psychiatry practice. I'm interested in geriatrics, sleep, and especially addiction psychiatry. Obviously I'm not going to do fellowships in all of them-- and I really want variety in my practice as I think I would get bored doing just geri or just addiction. What stops me from seeing geri Pts or addiction Pts as a general 'iatrist? If the answer is "nothing", then why is a fellowship necessary??? (other than to receive more training in X) Thanks for any info.
limits of general psych?
- Thread starter Teeple
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If your residency is in an area with a good substance abuser population, then you might not need the fellowship for clinical purposes.
This is based on word of mouth, but I have heard that fellowship in addiction doesn't really up your earning potential, and doesn't add much to the clinical knowledge if you did residency in an area where there is a lot of substance abuse. Again that is word of mouth, so someone correct me if they know better.
However fellowship in addiction would probably add to your academic knowledge on addiction, open the road to academic oppurtunities in the field, and may enhance your clinical knowledge of it.
So you don't necessarily need to have the fellowship to work in the field, but doing fellowship may enhance your skills & open doors.
At my current place of work, we usually only get patients after they've been in jail for several days. Hardly any of the psychiatrists I work with remember how to treat acute substance withdrawal. I thought this would be a skill all psychiatrists would have since at my residency, about 1/4 of the patients were on some type of acute withdrawal.
As for geriatrics, I've heard similar. You don't have to be a geriatric psychiatrist (with a fellowship) to practice in that area, but having training in such would help. Again, some programs may give you a very enriched geriatric experience, others may not. My own program is split into 2 locations, and one location IMHO had much better geriatric exposure than the other.
The bottom line is as a general psychiatrist, you can work in the more specialized fields of psychiatry, but temper this with the geographic standard of care and knowing your own limitations. In several of the areas where there are available fellowships, you don't necessarily need the fellowship training. I've yet to see any psychiatrist in person who does CL actually have completed a CL fellowship, though I would think that if you did do one, you probably are very good in it.
The one field I can think of where I would strongly reccomend a fellowship if you do the clinical work in that area is Child Psychiatry.
This is based on word of mouth, but I have heard that fellowship in addiction doesn't really up your earning potential, and doesn't add much to the clinical knowledge if you did residency in an area where there is a lot of substance abuse. Again that is word of mouth, so someone correct me if they know better.
However fellowship in addiction would probably add to your academic knowledge on addiction, open the road to academic oppurtunities in the field, and may enhance your clinical knowledge of it.
So you don't necessarily need to have the fellowship to work in the field, but doing fellowship may enhance your skills & open doors.
At my current place of work, we usually only get patients after they've been in jail for several days. Hardly any of the psychiatrists I work with remember how to treat acute substance withdrawal. I thought this would be a skill all psychiatrists would have since at my residency, about 1/4 of the patients were on some type of acute withdrawal.
As for geriatrics, I've heard similar. You don't have to be a geriatric psychiatrist (with a fellowship) to practice in that area, but having training in such would help. Again, some programs may give you a very enriched geriatric experience, others may not. My own program is split into 2 locations, and one location IMHO had much better geriatric exposure than the other.
The bottom line is as a general psychiatrist, you can work in the more specialized fields of psychiatry, but temper this with the geographic standard of care and knowing your own limitations. In several of the areas where there are available fellowships, you don't necessarily need the fellowship training. I've yet to see any psychiatrist in person who does CL actually have completed a CL fellowship, though I would think that if you did do one, you probably are very good in it.
The one field I can think of where I would strongly reccomend a fellowship if you do the clinical work in that area is Child Psychiatry.
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