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The nature of this Q might be redundant, but can psychiatrists do a tox fellowship?
The nature of this Q might be redundant, but can psychiatrists do a tox fellowship?
I'm surprised there isn't a psych sponsored fellowship...That would be neat, certainly given both population and substance overlap.
Neat, but not really that useful. Psychiatry residents really wouldn't be prepared to handle the more complicated aspects of medicine that toxicologists handle on a regular basis.
Like others have said, you can if the fellowship director agrees to it, but you won't be able to sit for the tox boards unless you're coming from EM, peds, or PM/OM.The nature of this Q might be redundant, but can psychiatrists do a tox fellowship?
There kind of is; it's addiction psychiatry. That's what I'd suggest doing for anyone in psych who is interested in tox.I'm surprised there isn't a psych sponsored fellowship...That would be neat, certainly given both population and substance overlap.
No, that's not at all true about peds, EM, or PM. All three specialties get a lot of exposure to critical care and tox, especially EM.While I don't think psych could sponsor a fellowship I do think, given certain conditions, it would certainly be possible for a psychiatrist to enter toxicology. They'd probably have to get as much ICU exposure as possible in residency with some possible EM. Keep in mind that a lot of the complicated stuff tox people do is largely a result of fellowship. Peds folks going into a tox fellowship obviously know little about adult acute and critical care. EM folks, while doing some ICU, aren't masters of it. And as far as occupational/preventive med, do they even step foot in a hospital in residency? There would most certainly be some technical difficulties in training someone from psych but there are also some advantages that some of the other guys won't have, especially in the realm of emergency psych.
I agree that our focus is much more on the medical stabilization side of things versus the psych side of things. Like many academic centers, we have a separate psych ED. So what ends up happening is that the really sick tox patients, including those who are withdrawing from alcohol, get admitted to medicine/peds or the ICU, and the admitting team consults inpatient psych. The stable patients go to EMH (Emergency Mental Health) to be evaluated.Bartelby said:Agreed. I did a tox rotation recently and while it was a lot of fun it was all about acute management and stabilization, and then ongoing advice about purely medical issues. The fact that many of the patients were intentional overdoses was irrelevant to how they were managed from a toxicological standpoint, except that they got a sitter and we made sure they did not have hidden fentanyl patches or drug stashes they could harm themselves with once admitted.