Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship

Director: Adriana Hermida, MD
Address: 12 Executive Park Drive NE, 1st Floor, Suite 142, Atlanta, GA 30329
Email

Coordinator: Leslie Mann
Contact: Email or 404-712-6934

Level: PGY-5 or higher

Annual Stipend: $79,008 (PGY-5, 2024-2025)

Positions: 2

Accreditation: ACGME

The Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship is an ACGME-accredited fellowship that fulfills the specialized post-residency training requirement necessary for ABPN certification in Geriatric Psychiatry.We adhere to all requirements stated in the ACGME program requirements for this specialty.

The fellowship is a one-year program with clinical training conducted at Emory University Hospital at Wesley Woods, Brain Health Center and Atlanta VA Medical Center. Fellows receive direct supervision in medical, neurological and psychiatry evaluation and management of a varied geriatric population.

Our fellowship program is primarily located at the Emory University Hospital at Wesley Woods. The geriatric hospital was established in 1987 and is the first comprehensive outpatient and acute care facility in the United States to specialize exclusively in geriatrics.  More than 2,300 inpatients and 34,000 outpatients receive care at Wesley Woods each year.

Wesley Woods is located on a 64 acre campus with two nursing homes, an assisted/ independent living facility, outpatient medical offices, an Alzheimer’s Disease Research Center (ADRC), sleep center, geriatric partial hospital program and neuroimaging facilities. Wesley Woods is approximately one mile north of Emory University Hospital and the main campus of Emory University on Clifton Road. 

Fellows spend two months at the Atlanta VA Medical Center, about 3 miles from the Wesley Woods campus. One month at the VA includes a CL rotation, which provides consult liaison experiences for nonpsychiatric services at the VAMC. These experiences include consultation to inpatient, outpatient, and emergency services. One month at the VA also includes a substance abuse rotation, which provides experiences to develop expertise in the diagnosis, assessment, treatment and management of geriatric patients with drug and alcohol addictions.

Some highlights of our fellowship include: 

• One of the unique advantages of Emory University Hospital at Wesley Woods is that the medical staff is diverse and accessible, and you will get to know the medicine and neurology attendings and fellows over the course of the year.  This leads to a learning environment that is often informal but can provide a multimodal approach to the patient and their medical problems.  Perhaps one of the best conferences at Wesley Woods is the Multidisciplinary Case Conference that is held every month and includes a panel of attendings from each service and representatives from all the ancillary services. This type of learning experience is important in understanding geriatric patients with complex medical and psychiatric patients.
• The fellowship program includes a mini-ECT fellowship, at no cost for the fellow. The electroconvulsive therapy (ECT) service at Wesley Woods is one of the most active ECT services in the country, administering more than 200 ECT treatments a month and providing training for approximately 15 visiting physicians (who come here from all over the globe) a year.  Fellows can obtain a certificate of participation in ECT that can be used to obtain hospital privileges in ECT after graduation from the fellowship.
• There are clinical experiences in the departments of geriatric medicine and neurology. These services have received national recognition for their work in the elderly. The fellow receives education about Sleep Disorders, Tourette’s, a variety of movement disorders, strokes, and more.
• Emory offers outstanding research opportunities.  Emory has consistently been ranked in the top 20 medical schools for federal grant funding.  The geriatric psychiatry faculty also has private foundation/ pharmaceutical funding to study the pharmacological treatment of Alzheimer’s disease, TMS and DBS in depression, the relationship of depression and dementia, caregiver stress, suicide in the elderly and depression in community elders. 
• The program has ongoing seminars covering specific reading assignments from three geriatric psychiatry textbooks covering areas of normal aging, pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics, diagnostic issues, management, treatment outcome, psychotherapy, cultural diversity, epidemiology, quality of life issues, death and dying issues, psychological testing in the elderly and medical ethics.

Applicants must complete an ACGME accredited psychiatry residency program before beginning the geriatric fellowship program, should be qualified to obtain a Georgia State License and to have passed Steps I, I, & III of the USMLE by the time fellowship begins.

Completed application
Personal statement
Current CV
USMLE score transcript
3 letters of recommendation (one from a residency training director)
Medical school transcripts
ECFMG certificate (if applicable)

Questions or additional information requests can be made by contacting Leslie Mann via Email or 404-712-6934.