Thoughts on Northwestern’s CAP Program?

[scruffy821]

Anyone here have updated insight into Northwestern’s CAP fellowship program? Impression of strengths or weaknesses? Any recent changes? I noticed that the PD and call structure seems to have changed since people last reviewed this program on SDN, and they seem to be getting competitive residents. I’m also curious about any insider perspective on their 6 months of inpatient unit work at Lurie Children’s. Appreciate any thoughts!

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[Merovinge]

Lurie's is an absolutely amazing children's hospital. From the infrastructure, to the attending's, the access to resources (I swear more celebrities come through than Cochella), there is a reason it is consistently in the top 10 in the country. CAP itself has had a tremendous turnover in the past 10 years. Dr. Dulcan was known to have a lot of control over the fellowship (I really like her, but this was a point of contention for some), and am not sure how things have changed with the new chair. I would definitely talk to current fellows or attending's there to get a better idea about how the recent changes have gone.

 

[Dr Brew-Mack]

Anyone here have updated insight into Northwestern’s CAP fellowship program? Impression of strengths or weaknesses? Any recent changes? I noticed that the PD and call structure seems to have changed since people last reviewed this program on SDN, and they seem to be getting competitive residents. I’m also curious about any insider perspective on their 6 months of inpatient unit work at Lurie Children’s. Appreciate any thoughts!

I'm a second-year fellow at Lurie/Northwestern, and have had a very positive training experience. There have been a couple important changes in the past few years, with Dr. Sadhu taking over for the longtime PD, Dr. Dulcan (who still supervises and teaches fellows), Dr. Walkup joining as Chair from Cornell, and Dr. Janssen as Vice Chair from NYU. I think they've all helped to push for changes that have improved the fellow experience (mainly by eliminating overnight in-house call, expanding the faculty, and adding new clinical opportunities).

The fellowship class size expanded from four to six last year, so we now have twelve total fellows. Based on feedback from our class, the current first-year fellows have four months of inpatient unit, four months of partial hospital program, and four months of C/L (we had 6 IPU and 3 each of PHP and C/L). These are split into 2-month blocks, so they have six 2-month blocks for the year, and rotate through those three intensive services. The inpatient unit experience is busy, and with COVID there wasn't the usual summer decrease in admissions, but it's at one of the top children's hospitals in the country, so we get the opportunity to work with some rare and severe cases. The inpatient attending, Dr. Cummins, has been there for decades and is a trove of knowledge. It's challenging, and I think it makes for excellent clinical skill-building. The CAP1 year also has a limited number of outpatients with supervision. Second year is mostly outpatient work, with a couple days for electives, and a couple of rotations that we do for a number of months (neuropsychiatry clinic, neurology, parent management training group, unified protocol group, juvenile court clinic, etc.). We have call both years, but there's no in-person overnight call, and we have 4 weekends of calls per year with the rest off. Call is mostly doing admissions to the inpatient unit or, less often, urgent C/L coverage. We don't have to round on anyone on call weekends unless a C/L follow-up is urgent. It's many, many times easier than my call experience in residency.

I would also recommend checking out the videos on the program page, too, they're new this year since interviews aren't on-site: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship

 

[milkncookies]

I'm a second-year fellow at Lurie/Northwestern, and have had a very positive training experience. There have been a couple important changes in the past few years, with Dr. Sadhu taking over for the longtime PD, Dr. Dulcan (who still supervises and teaches fellows), Dr. Walkup joining as Chair from Columbia, and Dr. Janssen as Vice Chair from NYU. I think they've all helped to push for changes that have improved the fellow experience (mainly by eliminating overnight in-house call, expanding the faculty, and adding new clinical opportunities).

The fellowship class size expanded from four to six last year, so we now have twelve total fellows. Based on feedback from our class, the current first-year fellows have four months of inpatient unit, four months of partial hospital program, and four months of C/L (we had 6 IPU and 3 each of PHP and C/L). These are split into 2-month blocks, so they have six 2-month blocks for the year, and rotate through those three intensive services. The inpatient unit experience is busy, and with COVID there wasn't the usual summer decrease in admissions, but it's at one of the top children's hospitals in the country, so we get the opportunity to work with some rare and severe cases. The inpatient attending, Dr. Cummins, has been there for decades and is a trove of knowledge. It's challenging, and I think it makes for excellent clinical skill-building. The CAP1 year also has a limited number of outpatients with supervision. Second year is mostly outpatient work, with a couple days for electives, and a couple of rotations that we do for a number of months (neuropsychiatry clinic, neurology, parent management training group, unified protocol group, juvenile court clinic, etc.). We have call both years, but there's no in-person overnight call, and we have 4 weekends of calls per year with the rest off. Call is mostly doing admissions to the inpatient unit or, less often, urgent C/L coverage. We don't have to round on anyone on call weekends unless a C/L follow-up is urgent. It's many, many times easier than my call experience in residency.

I would also recommend checking out the videos on the program page, too, they're new this year since interviews aren't on-site: Child & Adolescent Psychiatry Fellowship

Walkup was from Cornell