Child and Adolescent Outpatient Clinic

Experience in outpatient clinic will include from 14 to 15.5 months (six to seven and a half months part-time in the first year and eight months part-time in the second year). During the outpatient rotation, the fourth year resident will be scheduled to see three new evaluations per week. The fourth year resident will supervise the evaluations of medical students and other personnel.

The outpatient service is organized into general and specialty clinics with specific faculty assigned to each clinic. The supervising faculty is responsible at each clinic to ensure that educational and service needs are met. Subspecialty programs include the Adolescent Eating Disorders Clinic, the Attention-Deficit/Hyperactivity Disorder Clinic, the Autism and Developmental Disorders Clinic, a clinic for complex disorders including schizophrenia, and an anxiety disorder clinic.

During the fifth year, the residents may develop their own clinical interest into a specialty clinic. Research or accumulating special experience with children with particular diagnoses may be achieved in this way. Examples of clinics that have been organized by residents in the past include: Preschool Clinic, Autism Clinic, Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder Clinic, and Major Depressive Disorder Clinic.

The resident participating in the outpatient rotation performs comprehensive evaluations in conjunction with psychologists and psychology interns, as well as medical students and others who assist in data gathering. The resident may assume responsibility as team coordinator, summarize and prepare a report of the findings, and ensure appropriate disposition and distribution of written and oral communication to referring health care and social agencies. In special situations such as evaluating and treating children with school refusal, the resident will at times have daily contact with schools. Some patients seen for evaluation will be appropriate for psychotherapy and will be followed for short- or long-term care by the resident. Residents will generally be treating 8 to 10 patients per week for psychotherapy and following up to 30 children and adolescents for medication management. While on the inpatient rotation, residents follow a maximum of four hours per week of child outpatient therapy cases.

The Child and Adolescent Medication Management Clinic meets twice a week. The clinic provides supervision by faculty to third year general psychiatry residents rotating through Outpatient Child Psychiatry, and fourth and fifth year child psychiatry residents see patients in the Medication Management Clinic. Fifth year child and adolescent psychiatry residents will serve as supervisors to the third year general psychiatry residents in the Child and Adolescent Medication Management Clinic (under the supervision of child and adolescent psychiatry faculty). Child residents may also participate in two other specialty follow-up clinics.