The Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship at Dell Medical School integrates a wide variety of clinical training with exposure to continuity and month-long experiences designed to provide psychiatrists with expertise in the diagnosis and treatment of neuropsychiatric disorders in late life. Fellows will receive training in a variety of settings that span the typical spectrum of geriatric psychiatric care, including care hospitals/consultation settings, outpatient specialty clinics, long-term care settings, palliative/hospice care settings, electroconvulsive therapy service as well as an inpatient geriatric psychiatry unit.
Curriculum Information
Month-Long Experiences
- Block 1: Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin — Geriatric Consult-Liaison Psychiatry
- Block 2: Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin — Electroconvulsive Therapy
- Block 3: Ascension Seton Medical Center Austin — Palliative and Hospice Medicine
- Blocks 4/5: Austin State Hospital — Inpatient Geriatric Psychiatry
- Block 6: Dell Seton Medical Center at The University of Texas — Geriatric Consult-Liaison Psychiatry
- Block 7: Caraday Healthcare Centers — Geriatric Medicine Long-Term Care
Continuity Experiences
- 12 months (1/2 day per week): Ascension Medical Group Seton Behavioral Health Geriatric Psychiatry Outpatient Clinic
- 12 months (1/2 day per week): Caraday Healthcare Centers — Geriatric Medicine Long-Term Care
- 12 months (1/2-1 day per week): Research/Educational Time (including didactics)
- 6 months (1 day per week): UT Health Austin Comprehensive Memory Center
Elective Experiences
- Seton Edgar B. Davis Heritage Intensive Outpatient Program
- Ascension Seton Shoal Creek Geriatric Psychopharmacology Consult Service
- Geriatric Advocacy Elective
Learning Activities
Fellows will participate in weekly supervision, psychotherapy, mentored scholarly activities, precepting, case conferences, interdisciplinary team meetings, grand rounds, and morbidity and mortality case conferences.
Didactic activities include:
- Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences Grand Rounds
- Ascension Medical Group Seton Behavioral Health Outpatient Geriatric Clinic Didactics
- Neuropsychiatry Conference
- Geriatric Psychiatry Journal Club
- Hospice and Palliative Medicine Vital Talk Workshop
- General Psychiatry Residency Systems of Care Curriculum
- General Psychiatry Residency Structural and Cultural Competency Curriculum
- Additional opportunities to participate in didactics offered in the General Psychiatry Residency, Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship, Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship and the Hospice and Palliative Medicine Fellowship programs at Dell Med.
Research Opportunities
The Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences is an emerging leader in psychiatric research. Faculty members are dedicated to exploring the psychological and neurobiological underpinnings of human behavior and mental disorders in addition to developing improved treatments and treatment delivery systems using the most advanced research methods and technologies available.
UT Health Austin’s Comprehensive Memory Center within the Mulva Clinic for the Neurosciences participates in research studies affiliated with the Texas Alzheimer’s Research and Care Consortium in addition to participating as the recruitment/treatment site for the ADvance II study to evaluate deep brain stimulation targeting the fornix for the treatment of mild Alzheimer’s disease. Areas of research within the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences include childhood disorders and developmental neuroscience, trauma, addiction, neuroimaging and translational neuroscience, psychopharmacology, genetics, genomics and epigenetics, mood disorders, and health services implementation science. Research opportunities exist for geriatric psychiatry fellows focused on novel treatment, neuromodulation and neuroimaging, including the RECOVER Study to vagal nerve stimulation in treatment-resistant depression.