Curriculum

The educational objectives of the program are to develop your clinical expertise and, through your teaching and liaison efforts, to increase the mental health skills and knowledge of non-psychiatric physicians and medical center staff.

These objectives will be addressed as you perform hospital-based and outpatient consultations, participate in teaching rounds and complete a formal academic curriculum.

Clinical Training
You will receive extensive experience in conventional medically oriented psychiatric consultation - both inpatient and outpatient.

You will gain the skills and experience necessary to independently evaluate and treat complex psychological problems. This program offers you a unique opportunity to participate in a multidisciplinary team approach to psychological problems.

Mayo Clinic offers a unique multidisciplinary practice and academic environment, in which you will be intimately involved in clinical decision-making with many opportunities to develop your assessment, intervention, and teaching skills. There is an emphasis on the integration of science and practice with training in empirically supported interventions.

Rotation Descriptions

• Inpatient Consultation Service
  You will triage the priority of consult requests received, assign consults to team members and complete occasional consults in a primary role. You also will observe junior members of the team interviewing and teach interviewing skills, engage in bedside teaching and oversee didactics on issues relevant to patients.
• Transplant Service
  You will complete outpatient consults for pretransplant psychiatric screening and evaluation of living donors, and inpatient consults of transplantation patients. You will receive staff supervision on completed outpatient and inpatient consults and provide follow-up care.
• Medical Psychiatry Inpatient
  You will learn to manage a multidisciplinary team composed of junior residents, nursing staff, social workers, recreational therapists and a chaplain in the care of geriatric and medical-psychiatry patients. You will learn the optimal use (and limitations) of a medical-psychiatry unit as an adjunctive resource in the care of patients commonly encountered on medical-surgical units by a psychiatric consultation service.
• Outpatient Consultation Service
  On this rotation, consults are received from virtually every specialty. However, the majority are received from General Internal Medicine, Neurology, Gastroenterology, Oncology, Rheumatology, and Endocrinology. This rotation will give you exposure to a wide variety of ethnocultural backgrounds and a broad variety of psychiatric diagnoses, including dementia of all types, major depression, bipolar disorder, anxiety disorders, adjustment disorders, personality disorders, substance abuse and dependence, somatoform disorders, schizophrenia, delusional disorders and other psychotic disorders, and psychiatric disorders due to general medical conditions.

Elective Rotations
In addition to the required rotations, you will select from the following rotations:

• Addiction Medicine (one month)                   
• Behavioral Neurology (one month)
• Oncology (one month)
• Palliative Care & Hospice Service / Ethics Consultation Service (one month)
• Physiatry Rehabilitation Unit (one month)
• Pain Rehabilitation Center (one month)
• Toxicology Service (one month)
• Clinical Chaplain’s Consultation Service (2 weeks)
• Fibromyalgia Outpatient Program (2 weeks)
• Neuroradiology (2 weeks)                  
• Additional months in required rotation sites (one month)

Didactic Training
The educational program consists of daily rounds, seminars, and formal and informal case discussions. Daily interaction between the program faculty and postgraduate fellows will result in a close working relationship and a dynamic learning environment.

During the Psychosomatic Medicine Fellowship, you will participate in:

• Psychosomatic Medicine Core Seminar (weekly)
• Psychosomatic Medicine Case Conference (monthly)
• Psychosomatic Medicine Journal Club (monthly)
• Psychiatry & Psychology Grand Rounds (weekly)
• Psychosomatic Medicine Supervisory & Administrative Seminar (biweekly)
• General Psychiatry Clinical Case Conference (weekly)
• Behavioral Neurology Review Course (weekly for six months)
• Statistical Analysis and Experimental Design Seminar (biweekly for three months)
• Internal Medicine Grand Rounds (weekly)

Research Training
Your research opportunities at Mayo Clinic are outstanding. Due to the wealth of patient material, prospective or retrospective investigations in either basic science or clinical studies are possible.

You will have the opportunity to work with established clinical researchers on ongoing projects, as well as develop independent research projects. You are strongly encouraged to generate at least one national presentation and at least one publication by the end of the Fellowship.