Emory University Hospital

Under the direction of Raymond Young, MD, the Emory University Hospital service is a high quality clinical service that provides teaching and training for psychosomatic medicine fellows, general psychiatry residents, combined internal medicine psychiatry residents, medical students and physician assistant students.

Emory University Hospital is a 579 bed hospital. The consultation liaison service averages four new consults a day. These services are provided for inpatient medical, neurological and surgical services. These consultations provide a wide range of clinical experiences for the trainee. These experiences include assessment and management of delirium, dementia, psychosis, affective disorders, somatoform disorders, anxiety disorders, legal aspects of consultation and substance abuse. Additional unique clinical opportunities include psychiatric evaluations for organ transplantation, and nonepileptic seizures.

In addition to daily bedside teaching, the consultation liaison service provides a weekly didactic series. During the didactic sessions, the trainees are provided an overview of topics relevant to psychosomatic medicine and consultation liaison psychiatry. These topics are discussed utilizing interactive materials such as case presentations, review articles, an review of questions. The trainees are provided the latest literature pertaining to psychosomatic medicine.

General Psychiatry and Internal Medicine-Psychiatry residents spend two months on Emory's Consultation Liaison service during their 2nd year of residency. 3rd and 4th year medical students have also rotated on the consultation service as part of their required clerkship as well as elective rotations. Since 2012, the consultation liaison service has also provided clinical experiences for physician assistant students.

For those residents who want to specialize in Psychosomatic Medicine (Consultation Liaison Psychiatry), the Department of Psychiatry offers a one year fellowship, during which they receive specialty training in Psychosomatic Medicine. During their one year experience they receive in depth clinical experiences, both inpatient and outpatient, teaching experiences and clinical research experience which focuses on education, quality and safety.

The Emory Consultation Liaison service is consistently rated as one of the best clinical rotations by both students, residents and fellows. Several faculty members of the consultation liaison service (including Dr. Young) have won teaching awards for outstanding clinical education.