Med-Psych vs CL Fellowship

[jdwmont]

Can anyone speak to the benefits and disadvantages of being dual-boarded in IM/psych vs fellowship trained in CL? Would it still be necessary to do a fellowship in CL to practice psychosomatic medicine if one was dual-boarded? Thanks for the input!

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[nitemagi]

You don't have to be boarded to do psychosomatic medicine.

IM/Psych is probably more useful if you want to be a super-primary care provider, run a medical-home clinic, or be a primary solo attending on a med-psych unit.

The disadvantages to double-boarding is - there's few programs, you may not be board eligible in the individual specialties, it's a frak-load of work (read, burnout), many complain that they feel they have less time to get real depth in expertise in the individual fields (such as therapy).

 

[atsai3]

Can anyone speak to the benefits and disadvantages of being dual-boarded in IM/psych vs fellowship trained in CL? Would it still be necessary to do a fellowship in CL to practice psychosomatic medicine if one was dual-boarded? Thanks for the input!

If you wanted to practice in a specialized setting, e.g., the Duke Med-Psych Ward Service, then you would probably need to complete a med/psych residency. To my knowledge none of the Duke med/psych attendings are psychosomatic boarded -- they pretty much all graduated from the Duke med/psych program.

 

[psychattending]

You don't have to be dual boarded or even do a CL fellowship to do psychosomatic medicine. Any reasonably trained psychiatrist has the ability to do consultation-liason work. The path that graduates are taking are consistent with this position. Dual-board programs are having problems recruiting people (I think there is only something like 20 slots in the country now.). ABPN is also having problems getting enough people to want to be certified in CL to justify the costs involved in having the subspecialty. If you are interested in CL work, I would recommend that you find a general psych program that gives you good exposure to a strong IM program, strong consult psych rotation, a strong foundation in psychopharmacology, and a lot of elective time so that you can do more work in the area.

 

[michaelrack]

ABPN is also having problems getting enough people to want to be certified in CL to justify the costs involved in having the subspecialty. .

The ABPN sure raked in the bucks (including from me) during the 5 year grandfather period when fellowship wasn't required.

 

[Doc Samson]

You don't have to be dual boarded or even do a CL fellowship to do psychosomatic medicine. Any reasonably trained psychiatrist has the ability to do consultation-liason work. The path that graduates are taking are consistent with this position. Dual-board programs are having problems recruiting people (I think there is only something like 20 slots in the country now.). ABPN is also having problems getting enough people to want to be certified in CL to justify the costs involved in having the subspecialty. If you are interested in CL work, I would recommend that you find a general psych program that gives you good exposure to a strong IM program, strong consult psych rotation, a strong foundation in psychopharmacology, and a lot of elective time so that you can do more work in the area.

I'd recommend that you do all of that - and then go do a psychosomatic medicine fellowship. It's a completely different experience than what you can piece together from 2-3 months in residency.