Question about child psych fellowship

[nontradst]

Hi everyone! I am a psychiatry PGY-2. I posted a thread a few months ago about addiction psych fellowships, and now have one about child psych, as I am now debating between doing one or the other. If I decide to fast track into child psych, part of me is concerned that my adult psych training will be watered down, from not completing a 4th yr of residency. I want to do community psychiatry, and would like to work with adults, and kids, if I decide to do a child psych fellowship.

My question: for those of you who fast tracked and treat adults and children, do you feel that losing an extra year of adult training has affected you comfort in treating psychiatrically complex adult pts (e.g., those on multiple antipsychotics)? I could forgo fast tracking of course, though, it would be nice to go ahead and be done in 5yrs, obviously.

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[Shufflin]

If you spent lots of time seeing patients in outpatient in PGY2 and PGY3, then consider it. Otherwise, take 6 years.

Azamat: [arguing with Borat] What's in California?
Borat: Pearl Harbor is there. So is Texas.

 

[SourceOfDenial]

It seems these discussions often assume learning stops after residency. I don't think it's worth it to take an extra year to finish an adult residency. Especially when you could do a fast track child fellowship and then do an addiction fellowship in six years too.

Take a moonlighting job with adults over child fellowship, and/or hire a supervisor with an eye towards psychopharm when you finish.

 

[TexasPhysician]

Fast-track. I was moonlighting in adult facilities during my child fellowship. My program has a relaxed pgy 4 year, so I likely saw more adult patients moonlighting than they did in residency. At the same time, I paid off my loans (started moonlighting pgy 2).

 

[MedMan80]

It depends on your adult program strength, mine was really weak; mostly a rehashing of what we did in PG2 and PG3, so i saw it as no advantage and this helped me make a decision to fast track..conversely if you have a strong PG4, then may be worth it to not fast track.