Consultation to Community Systems of Care
In Year 2 of the program each resident will serve as a chief resident eight hours a week for four months (see following page). During this rotation they teach and consult to general psychiatry residents in Acute Psychiatry Service (APS) of the Emergency Department of MGH. While rotating in the APS, the second-year residents will participate in a formal consultation service to the community mental health centers and agencies. The residents will review many of the cases seen in the APS and call one of the MGH-affiliated community health centers to follow up cases seen in the APS and treated in the Health Center. These centers include the Charlestown, Chelsea and Revere Health Centers. Every other week, the resident will visit his or her health center and attend the weekly Child Team meeting. The role of consultant will serve to help the team formulate an appropriate intervention for the child and family and ensure that proper referrals to appropriate local courts, schools, social service agencies, etc. have been made. The resident will assist the team in developing means for secondary and tertiary prevention for the identified patient. Community consultation will be under the supervision of Dr. Laura Prager, Director of MGH Child Emergency Services and attending in the APS and by a Board-certified staff child psychiatrist in the resident’s selected community health center. While the resident is not the primary treating clinician in these cases, there will be continuity of the consultation role as the resident follows the child and family from presentation in the APS through treatment in the community health center.