In these rotations, which occur in both years of your fellowship, you will evaluate and treat preschoolers to adolescents in an outpatient setting.
These rotations take place at the Children’s Psychiatry Clinic of the Oishei Children’s Hospital, which provides diagnostic and treatment services to Western New York youth with emotional and/or behavioral disturbances or family relationship problems. The clinic specializes in complex and difficult psychiatric disorders.
Throughout your outpatient work, you will collaborate closely with experienced clinical social workers and psychologists to treat a full spectrum of child and adolescent psychiatric problems, excluding severe substance abuse disorders.
You will provide a wide range of treatment modalities, including:
Most your cases will focus on medication management. You will provide ongoing medication therapy and psychotherapy for a smaller number of patients, and see a few psychotherapy-only cases.
In addition, you will collaborate and consult with other mental health professionals, pediatricians and professionals in schools, social services, the legal system and other areas of the community.
Videotaping and closed-circuit monitoring capabilities help you review and improve your interviewing and therapy techniques. You will discuss your progress with our faculty of seasoned, exemplary clinicians.
The clinic has separate teen and children/family waiting rooms with appropriate furniture, artwork, games and activity resources. It offers a warm, welcoming family therapy and observation unit, the only one of its kind in Western New York. Its state-of-the-art observation room helps faculty and staff provide positive, comforting care.
The clinic sees 13,000 new cases annually with more than 500 active cases at any one time. Its patients, ages 2 to 21, generally have full scale IQs of 60 or higher and generally do not have severe substance abuse/dependency issues. They come from a wide variety of backgrounds reflecting the ethnic makeup of Buffalo, and they use several forms of insurance, including Medicaid.
Diagnoses handled include:
The caseload for these rotations varies with your concurrent assignments. In general, first-year residents work two to four outpatient hours per week and second-year residents work eight to 12 outpatient hours per week.
Because you work in the outpatient clinic throughout your residency, you see patients longitudinally for up to two years.
Children's Psychiatric Clinic
1028 Main St.
Buffalo, NY, 14202
Phone: (716) 859-5454
Laura Benedict, PhD