• Inpatient Psychiatry Program
  
  
• Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service
  
  

Psychiatric Inpatient Psychiatry Program

Psychiatry Consultation-Liaison Service

Treating medically-ill patients with psychiatric symptoms is at the forefront of training in the GWU psychiatry residency. With medically-ill patients, residents learn how to move back and forth among physiological, psychological, and sociocultural understandings of patients' problems, solving problems and tailoring treatments that most appropriately respond to their needs. Residents learn how to utilize psychotherapy, both at the bedside and in outpatient visits, to promote resilience by mobilizing hope, purpose, and supportive family and community relationships for patients who must live under the stress of medical illness. These competencies enable our residents to collaborate effectively with other physicians in the medical community. Among the full-time GWU psychiatry faculty, Drs. Tom Wise, Cathy Crone, James Griffith, Lynne Gaby, and Anton Trinidad all hold subspecialty board certification in Psychosomatic Medicine from the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology.

Didactic seminars and clinical rotations in consultation-liaison psychiatry are conducted across multiple residency years. PGY-II residents at Virginia Hospital Center conduct weekly liaison Medical and Pulmonary Intensive Care Rounds with attending faculty.

PGY-III residents conduct psychiatric consultations on a 20% time commitment throughout the academic year (approximately 80 * 100 new consultations over the year). Teaching rounds with GWU Hospital are conducted daily with attending consultation-liaison psychiatry faculty. Over the course of the PGY-III year, residents are expected to complete within their outpatient psychotherapy case loads: (1) a trauma-focused brief psychotherapy with a patient who has pseudoseizures (conversion disorder secondary to traumatic stress), (2) a couple or family therapy for a patient coping with medical illness, and (3) a brief individual psychotherapy for a patient coping with medical illness. In addition to listed consultation-liaison psychiatry seminars in the didactic curriculum, PGY-III residents attend three weekly case conferences: Epilepsy Conference (required), Outpatient Medical Illness Conference (required), Sleep Disorders Medicine Conference (elective). A joint Psychiatry-Medicine Case Conference is conducted bimonthly with faculty from the Department of Medicine around complicated cases. During the PGY-IV year, a range of special projects are available for clinical research or specialized training with medically-ill patients. During 2005, two PGY-III residents and a PGY-IV resident each have submitted clinical research projects in consultation-liaison psychiatry for presentation at the Annual Meeting of the American Psychiatric Association.

The GWU-Inova Fairfax Hospital Fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry is one of the nation's most highly regarded consultation-liaison fellowships. Under the leadership of Thomas Wise, MD, over 70 consultation-liaison psychiatrists have trained in the fellowship since 1979, including current academic leaders in the discipline. Its curriculum, organized by Program Director Catherine Crone, M.D., balances an array of general hospital and outpatient clinical experiences with academic scholarship and clinical research. Nine additional consultation-liaison psychiatrists on the GWU-Inova Fairfax clinical faculty complement the GWU full-time faculty as teachers and supervisors for the fellowship.