child psychiatry

[same21]

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[TexasPhysician]

1. Yes
2. Not very competitive
3. Yes

 

[carlosc1dbz]

1. You can go through pediatrics as well. At least thats my understanding. Here is an old article talking about that.

JAm Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry. 1992 Nov;31(6):1100-4.
Recruitment and training of child and adolescent psychiatry residents from pediatrics.
DeMaso DR, Mezzacappa E, Goldman SJ.
SourceDepartment of Psychiatry, Children's Hospital/Judge Baker Children's Center, Harvard Medical School, Boston, MA 02115.

2. People can get into fellowship if they apply broadly. It's not that competative.

3. Research regardless of the field will help you as an applicant, especially if your competition has none, which many times is the case. In the end, I think the programs want to make sure that you are easy to work with, and a motivated person willing to work hard.

 

[Firewood]

1. There are also combined programs you can apply to directly. You spend the first three years doing adult, and your last two doing child. Many programs with a child fellowship will also let you fast track into child after your first three years as well.

 

[billypilgrim37]

I am a first year med school student but I am extremely interested in child psychiatry. I have a few questions:

1. In order to enter the field, I need to do a standard psych residency and then apply for a child psych fellowship?
2. How competitive is child psych and what can I do to make myself a competitive candidate for it?
3. If I have research experience in fields other than psych (but no psych) is that still helpful?

1. The VAST majority do 3 years of general psych then the two year fellowship. There are reasons to do the full four years and then pursue the child fellowship, but I daresay there aren't any GOOD reasons to do so. The peds portal project is no more. If you want to be a child psychiatrist, you either go through the general psych path or the triple board path. Triple board is something that will sound like a good idea the first time you read about it until you realize later that it is a horrible idea for the vast majority of applicants. If you're asking general questions about the fellowship now, you don't have interests developed well enough to be even be thinking about the craziness that is triple board (that's perfectly okay!).

2. Psychiatry is just about the least competitive specialty anyway, and child fellowships are SUBSTANTIALLY less competitive than even the general programs. As far as making yourself competitive, just do things that you're going to be interested in. When I interview people, I don't really care about any generic things they do. I care about unique life interests and experiences that not everyone else has. Just do things that sound interesting to you. In general, do reasonably well on Step 1, get honors in medicine and psych, do well in peds and neuro, and work on being a decent, well-rounded human being (relative to other med students, at least). Care about something and then do it.

3. Research is research for the most part. If you're not interested in being a researcher, your research experience is just not that important. It's not a bad idea for everybody to have some level of involvement to learn some methods, to learn better how to read papers, etc., but if you don't see yourself as a researcher down the line, spend your energies elsewhere.

 

[pingouin]

What happened to the PPP? Not enough interest?

 

[billypilgrim37]

What happened to the PPP? Not enough interest?

Not sure. Basically, it was a bad idea that failed.

 

[surftheiop]

1. The VAST majority do 3 years of general psych then the two year fellowship. There are reasons to do the full four years and then pursue the child fellowship, but I daresay there aren't any GOOD reasons to do so. The peds portal project is no more. If you want to be a child psychiatrist, you either go through the general psych path or the triple board path. Triple board is something that will sound like a good idea the first time you read about it until you realize later that it is a horrible idea for the vast majority of applicants. If you're asking general questions about the fellowship now, you don't have interests developed well enough to be even be thinking about the craziness that is triple board (that's perfectly okay!).

2. Psychiatry is just about the least competitive specialty anyway, and child fellowships are SUBSTANTIALLY less competitive than even the general programs. As far as making yourself competitive, just do things that you're going to be interested in. When I interview people, I don't really care about any generic things they do. I care about unique life interests and experiences that not everyone else has. Just do things that sound interesting to you. In general, do reasonably well on Step 1, get honors in medicine and psych, do well in peds and neuro, and work on being a decent, well-rounded human being (relative to other med students, at least). Care about something and then do it.

3. Research is research for the most part. If you're not interested in being a researcher, your research experience is just not that important. It's not a bad idea for everybody to have some level of involvement to learn some methods, to learn better how to read papers, etc., but if you don't see yourself as a researcher down the line, spend your energies elsewhere.

Can the 3+2 be at different institutions? Just wondering because it seems like there would be a lot of cases where someone could go to a substantially better fellowship than residency, so was curious if those people have to take an extra year if they want to do that.

 

[notdeadyet]

Can the 3+2 be at different institutions?

Yes. It happens all the time.

 

[BritTrooper]

2. How competitive is child psych and what can I do to make myself a competitive candidate for it?

If you just want a spot, you need a pulse. If you want to get into top 3 programs - you need it all (steps, research, awards etc) , it can get a little cut throat 😛