Child Fellowship
Goals & Objectives
Letter to Applicants
Application
Faculty Research
Maps for Applicants
From Garage to Renard (PDF)
From Garage to Renard (JPG)
Dear Applicant,
Congratulations on your career choice!
It has never been a better time to apply for our program as we are increasing our trainee complement and will now recruit four new fellows every year starting with the 2008-2009 academic year.
A brief overview of the William Greenleaf Eliot Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellowship at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis: First, our curriculum is detailed in the “Goals and objectives of the child psychiatry training program”. Second, this letter highlights the distinctive elements of our program which together, create an exceptional training opportunity for prospective child and adolescent psychiatry fellows who intend to become leaders in our field. The need for highly competent, well-trained child and adolescent psychiatrists continues to be critical. We offer a learning environment which teaches clinical excellence, research literacy and apprenticeship with dedicated teachers and role models.
Our goal is to foster the development of outstanding clinical and research leaders who will continue evolving throughout their careers to serve a rapidly changing field.
So, what defines our training program?
I Clinical Rotations
Our clinical rotations will expose you to children and their families presenting with a wide range of difficulties in varied systems of care. Variations in the presentation, evaluation and treatment of common and rare childhood psychiatric disorders in different circumstances and settings become familiar to our fellows during the course of their training. As of July 2008, our fellows will spend half of their first year rotating at Hawthorn Children's Psychiatric Hospital, a 52-bed hospital run by the Missouri Department of Mental Health (http://www.dmh.missouri.gov/index.htm) where the length of stay for children still averages two weeks. The other half of the first year is spent at the BJC Behavioral Health clinics (http://www.bjcbehavioralhealth.org), outpatient facilities which offer community mental health services to St. Louis area children. To allow the important benefit of learning from longitudinal care of the same families, our first year fellows also spend one afternoon per week rotating through the clinic of one of our core faculty on the WU/SLCH/BJC campus and while at Hawthorn, one morning per week at BJC and vice-versa. In your second year, you will have an outpatient continuity clinic at BJC Behavioral Health (one full day), rotate 3 afternoons per week in the outpatient clinics of our core faculty who often have specialized clinics salient to their research focus, including notably the infant-preschool clinic directed by Dr. Joan Luby. Your second year will also include a weekly child neurology outpatient clinic for 3 months (http://www.neuro.wustl.edu/divisions/pediatric.html); a biweekly school consultation rotation with children served by the St. Louis County Special School District for 3 months (http://www.ssd.k12.mo.us); and 3 months of Consult/Liaison at St. Louis Children’s hospital, one of the best US pediatric hospitals (http://www.stlouischildrens.org). Call is from home throughout the fellowship and will consist of 1 weekend call (Friday pm to Monday am) and 1 weekday call per month in your first year and 1 weekday call per week (no weekend call) in your second year. In the second year, call is coordinated so that even though call is from home, there are no clinical duties on the afternoon after call.
II Research Literacy
According to data compiled by the National Institutes of Health there are very few child and adolescent psychiatrists (CAP) who are funded principal investigators. Specifically, only about 15% of all projects relevant to Child and Adolescent Psychiatry are led by a trained child and adolescent psychiatrists. One important aspect of our program is that training takes place within a uniquely research-rich environment. Our core Child and Adolescent Psychiatry faculty currently serve as the principal investigators for 15 NIH funded projects, as well as serving as principal investigators, co-investigators and consultants on NIH and privately funded studies around the world. Our core faculty are listed below:
Richard D. Todd, Ph.D., M.D., Division Head
Anne L. Glowinski, M.D., M.P.E., Training Director
Gary Boxer, M.D., Clinic & Consult Director
Kelly N. Botteron, M.D.
John N. Constantino, M.D.
Barbara Geller, M.D.
Joan L. Luby, M.D.
John R. Pruett Jr., M.D., Ph.D.
Angela M. Reiersen, M.D.,
You will find that the breadth of studies conducted in our division is extensive, including studies of juvenile bipolar disorder, autism, preschool mood disorders, child and adolescent depression, normal brain development, suicidal behavior, social reciprocity, alcohol and nicotine abuse and attention deficit hyperactivity disorder. The range of study methods used is equally broad: neuroimaging, clinical nosology, longitudinal studies, twin studies, genetic and genetic epidemiology studies, treatment studies and prevention in high-risk samples. In addition, the department of Psychiatry, the School of Medicine and Washington University include many talented individuals who are also conducting research salient to child and adolescent psychiatry.
All fellows engage in scholarly activities. These include mandatory presentations at departmental research seminars or grand rounds in their second year, attendance at the annual October meeting (http://www.aacap.org/meeting/future.htm) of the American Academy of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry (AACAP) (paid in full for the chief fellow and in the form of an up to $1,000 stipend to other 2nd year fellows), research electives in the second year, and academic writing from book review to research manuscript. Several of our past fellows have published manuscripts based on work started during their fellowship. Examples of such publications are listed here:
Luby J, Tandon M, Nicol G. Three clinical cases of DSM-IV mania symptoms in preschoolers.J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol. 2007 : 17,237-43.
Pruett J Jr, Luby JL: Recent advances in prepubertal mood disorders: Phenomenology and treatment. Current Opinion in Psychiatry 2004: 17: 31-36.
Constantino JN, Przybeck T, Friesen D, Todd RD. Reciprocal social behavior in children with and without pervasive developmental disorders. J Dev Behav Pediatr 2000: 21: 2-11
Geller B, Bolhofner K, Craney JL, Williams M, DelBello MP, Gundersen K. Psychosocial functioning in a prepubertal and early adolescent bipolar disorder phenotype. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry 2000. 39, 1543-8
Luby JL, Svrakic DM, McCallum K, Przybeck TR, Cloninger CR. The Junior Temperament and Character Inventory: preliminary validation of a child self-report measure (1999). Psychol Rep. 1999, 84:1127-38.
Pornnoppadol C, Friesen DS, Haussler TS, Glaser PE, Todd RD. (1999) No difference between platelet serotonin--5-HT(2A) receptors from children with and without ADHD. J Child Adolesc Psychopharmacol. 9, 27-33
Geller B, Reising D, Leonard HL, Riddle MA, Walsh BT. Critical review of tricyclic antidepressant use in children and adolescents(1999), J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 38, 513-6
Botteron KN, Figiel GS, Wetzel MW, Hudziak J, VanEerdewegh M. (1992) MRI abnormalities in adolescent bipolar affective disorder. J Am Acad Child Adolesc Psychiatry, 31, 258-61
Fellows who are interested in pursuing an academic research career after clinical training are encouraged to apply for NIMH funded post doctoral research training which is currently available through the Washington University School of Medicine Psychiatry department (http://epi.wustl.edu/epi/fellowships/nimh.htm) and encouraged as well to take advantage of the NIH loan repayment program (http://www.lrp.nih.gov).
III Teaching and Learning
For many years the teaching of our faculty has been rated highly by medical students, general psychiatry residents, and our own fellows. Complementing the essential teaching and learning which accompanies clinical rotations, didactic activities are excellent and plentiful: weekly core lectures which include monthly journal club or clinical case presentations, weekly psychiatry departmental grand rounds and research seminars, and several conferences specific to each clinic. Dr. Anne Glowinski, our Child and Adolescent Psychiatry fellowship training director, is an AACAP Teaching Scholar (http://www.aacap.org/awards/teachingScholars.htm) and is committed to the ongoing enhancement of the teaching and learning environment in our program. Fellows are encouraged to understand the strengths and challenges associated with their own learning style to enhance their practice-based learning. In addition to weekly individual supervision, fellows also participate in supervision teams consisting of one senior faculty, one junior faculty, one senior fellow, one junior fellow and a second year general psychiatry resident rotating through Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. The team supervision format uses problem based learning principles and allows fellows the opportunity to (i) practice their interpersonal and communication skills, (ii) practice professionalism, (iii) teach to their peers by sharing their growing body of knowledge, (iv) learn to synthesize background information and form questions. The ability to communicate and articulate salient Child and Adolescent Psychiatry concepts is further exercised with the opportunity to teach and serve as role models to junior trainees including Washington University Medical Students who are outstanding (for the last eight years, Washington University School of Medicine has been ranked #1 in the United States for medical student selectivity).
Our ultimate goal is to help our fellows become leaders in child and adolescent psychiatry; we believe that excellent child and adolescent psychiatrists must always continue learning beyond their training, understand how knowledge is acquired and appreciate what remains unknown in our exciting evolving field.
We are looking forward to meeting you.
Anne L. Glowinski, M.D., M.P.E.
Director of Training in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry
Washington University School of Medicine
CID Building, 4560 Clayton Ave, Suite 1000, Office 1125
St. Louis, MO 63110
glowinskia@msnotes.wustl.edu