‘We want to strengthen our neuropsychiatric credentials’
‘We want to advance practices and systems for patients presenting to emergency, crisis, and urgent care settings’
ACLP’s Visiting Professorship Program awards have this year been made to Stanford University and the Medical College of Wisconsin.
Stanford University
Durga Roy, MD, FACLP, will visit Stanford University.
Stanford University—nominated by Jose Maldonado, MD, FACLP, chief, Division of Medical Psychiatry; chief, Critical Care Psychiatry Service—is a quaternary medical center with 800 beds, 100 of which are allocated to critical care units. With four C-L Psychiatry fellows and 70 Psychiatry residents, it has an active C-L Psychiatry service seeing more than 3,000 consults per year.
Dr. Roy will focus on presenting her clinical, research, and teaching expertise on the diagnosis and management of neuropsychiatric disorders encountered in C-L Psychiatry services and outpatient settings.
“Dr. Durga will speak on identification of neuropsychiatric phenomena seen in patients with traumatic brain injury, stroke, epilepsy, CNS tumors, and disorders of consciousness, and present cutting-edge treatment of patients in these populations,” says Dr. Maldonado.
“She will present a novel education model that is currently being implemented at Johns Hopkins focused on managing agitation in patients with complex neurobehavioral syndromes (brain injury, intellectual disability, and dementia) and how to integrate neuropsychiatric education into C-L Psychiatry services and fellowships.
“She will also use the opportunity to disseminate the ongoing research being conducted at Hopkins that centers on neuroimaging biomarker identification of neuropsychiatric symptoms after TBI.”
Dr. Roy will also perform didactic functions:
“As our program has continued to grow, and we expand our reach and services throughout the medical center, some specific areas of training remain underdeveloped, including the neuropsychiatric aspect,” says Dr. Maldonado.
“At our institution, the neuropsychiatry service is solely focused on epilepsy (which partly funds the program). We want to assert our expertise in all other areas, such as functional disorders, catatonia, and behavioral assessment, and management associated with neurodegenerative disorders (including dementia, Parkinson’s disease, traumatic brain injury).”
The C-L Psychiatry service at Stanford was established approximately 30 years ago, while the Critical Care Psychiatry service was developed six years ago. Over the last five years, the department has developed a Neuropsychiatry fellowship program that attracts a similar set of trainees. “Thus, we want to strengthen the neuropsychiatric credentials of the C-L Psychiatry service,” says Dr. Maldonado.
Medical College of Wisconsin
Scott Simpson, MD, MPH, FACLP, will visit the Medical College of Wisconsin.
The Medical College of Wisconsin—nominated by Julie Owen, MD, MBA, FAPA, assistant professor, Psychiatry & Behavioral Medicine and Emergency Medicine; medical director, Froedtert Hospital Emergency Psychiatry Service; chief medical officer, Mental Health Emergency Center—is the US’ third largest private medical school and Wisconsin’s largest private research institution.
While the main campus is located in Milwaukee, there are now two additional campuses housed in more rural areas of the state. It is in the top 5% nationally in the number of residents trained (>900 residents and fellows in training each year).
The Department of Psychiatry trains 32 residents annually in its General Adult Psychiatry residency program; it also has child/adolescent, C-L Psychiatry, geropsychiatry, addiction, and forensic Fellowship programs.
Froedtert Hospital, the college’s primary adult teaching affiliate and only level one trauma center in the region, houses an embedded Emergency Psychiatry Service, created in 2019 and staffed by C-L Psychiatry faculty.
“Our newer Emergency Psychiatry practice site is our Milwaukee Mental Health Emergency Center, which opened its doors in September 2022,” says Dr. Owen. “We are constantly honing our system of care as well as our educational offerings at both sites for our Psychiatry residents and fellows, and I have no doubt that bringing Dr. Simpson to our institution will substantially augment and advance these efforts.”
Dr. Simpson will address general principles in the evaluation and management of psychiatric emergencies. He will also cover setting up or improving a C-L emergency psychiatry teaching service and Emergency Psychiatry administration.
“The main topic of interest will be advances in and the future of Emergency Psychiatry,” says Dr. Owen. “We plan to discuss advances in practices and systems of care for patients presenting to emergency, crisis, and urgent care settings with psychiatric and addiction disorders.”
Dr. Owen adds: “Our community is in the midst of a ‘redesign’ of our Psychiatric Crisis System. In September 2022, our large County Mental Health Complex closed and its component services built out elsewhere. We now have a new Mental Health Emergency Center (a free-standing psychiatric emergency department), a joint venture between Milwaukee County and the four major health systems in the community, as well as an embedded Emergency Psychiatry Service at our academic medical center. We have Psychiatry trainees rotating in both locations, and this is an ideal time to bring in Dr. Simpson for his expertise on systems-based practice and the bolstering of our teaching rotations in both venues.”
Dr. Owen has consulted Dr. Simpson on numerous occasions over the past five years as these two Emergency Psychiatry services were developed. “This Visiting Professorship will formally bring Dr. Simpson on-site to disseminate his expertise more widely amongst our faculty and trainees—as well as the community psychiatrists who are staffing our Mental Health Emergency Center.”