Elective Rotations

Possible one-month elective opportunities include:

The CPEP at ECMC provides community-based care to patients unable or unwilling to follow through appropriately with out-patient psychiatric services in collaboration with Crisis Services of Erie County. 

You'll perform initial screenings or on-going assessment and stabilization of recently discharged or newly referred patients, and help connect patients to the recommended treatment resources. This includes work with individuals experiencing legal problems likely related to mental illness and exposure to law enforcement hospital diversion efforts. 

Through opportunities within Western New York, you will gain exposure to crisis services, police agencies, community mental health clinics, homeless and peer-run services, as well as an understanding of funding and political influences within Erie County affecting the provision of mental health treatment in this community.

This background will provide the knowledge of systems necessary to collaborate on the development of ideas and projects to better serve the treatment needs of individuals living in the community. 

Practice hospital-based psychiatry with the opportunity to witness how this can complement acute medical and surgical treatment plans.

By conducting psychiatric consultations, discussing differential diagnoses, developing treatment plans, and participating in rounds, you gain experience and learn about a wide range of clinical issues associated with treating patients experiencing concomitant medical problems.

As a Level I Trauma Center, the ECMC Emergency Department is the medical emergency response system for the entire county. Chemical dependency evaluations are available in the emergency room 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

You'll work closely with the attending physicians and registered nurses in the Emergency Department to best meet patient needs, refresh medical knowledge and an understanding of treatment resources to triage medical emergencies efficiently and appropriately to ensure high-quality patient care.

Provide care to individuals admitted into the EOB program, including ongoing clinical assessment, treatment planning and symptom stabilization.

This level of care is available to patients for whom treatment is felt to be necessary beyond 24 hours in the emergency department. Patients in extended observation beds are treated for up to 72 hours, where you work as part of a multi-disciplinary team to provide ongoing crisis intervention, medication management, and discharge planning.    

Participate in providing services to individuals detained in the Erie County Youth Services Center and to a large inmate population across two adult detention facilities in Erie County.

Services include assessment, inpatient and outpatient psychiatric care, recommendations to law enforcement, and court-ordered evaluations, with the opportunity to navigate the unique nuances of discharge planning complicated by legal involvement.

This urgent care center provides for walk-in mental health treatment of adults in crisis who do not require psychiatric emergency treatment or inpatient care.

You will provide individualized services to patients experiencing anxiety, depression, obsessive thoughts and behaviors, hallucinations, and feelings of hopelessness/helplessness.

Patients can receive follow-up assistance for medication and prescriptions through the MAP Clinic.

This is a medication refill clinic dedicated to helping patients avoid recurrence of symptoms that otherwise might happen because of difficulty accessing a psychiatric prescriber in the community.

Gain experience working with individuals seeking early recovery from addiction and their families.

Through evaluation, treatment planning, medical management, and monitoring outcomes, you will learn about common and more unique presentations of intoxication and withdrawal syndromes related to a wide range of substances of abuse.

You'll become proficient in understanding the indications for inpatient hospitalization in these cases, or referral to more appropriate community-based levels of care. 

Additionally, you'll gain experience by working with community providers from other disciplines (e.g., primary care, mental health) in discussing ongoing treatment opportunities.

ECMC’s child/adolescent and adult programs all have inpatient treatment sites, offering specialized programs for: 

• first episode psychosis
• chronic psychotic disorders
• geriatric, and
  
• psychiatric intensive care
  

You'll gain experience working with individuals from a wide age range of backgrounds and pathology, with diverse symptoms and treatment needs that are felt to require acute inpatient care. 

There is exposure to group and individual therapies, medication management, family meetings, legal factors, ongoing lethality assessment and symptom management, consultative services, and collaboration with comprehensive treatment team members. 

Provide treatment to individuals who are in need of more intensive ongoing treatment than regular, less frequent outpatient mental health appointments typically accommodate.

The PHP allows some patients to avoid acute inpatient hospitalization, or to move to a lower level of care more quickly, avoiding extended inpatient stays. 

You'll work directly with patients to provide daily medication management if necessary.

This program also provides group and individual therapies focused on improving coping skills, trauma treatment, as well as other opportunities to individualize treatment interventions for this sub-acutely symptomatic population. 

Dedicate time to focus on honing a research question and developing the scholarly project. You'll spend the full work week gathering and processing data, while continuing with the structured academic schedule.

You'll provide effective teaching in a variety of bedside and classroom settings to all members of a multi-disciplinary team including medical students, nurses, and residents.

Throughout the training year, you will develop training curricula and participate in delivery of didactic presentations to more junior trainees and staff, while also contributing to feedback and evaluations of trainees.

Using tele-psychiatry to connect remotely to other sites, you'll facilitate patient access to psychiatric treatment, decrease patient lengths of stay, and provide the most advanced and expedited services.

You'll enhance clinical care by providing up-front consultations with appropriate follow-up, and connect patients with behavior health specialists to provide the most clinically appropriate level of care, in the most technologically current way. 

The Buffalo VA Medical Center provides mental health services to veterans, in both inpatient and outpatient settings, with serious mental illnesses and/or chronic substance abuse problems. 

To assist veterans with symptom resolution, you'll provide services that include diagnosis and treatment planning, case management, evidence-based pharmacotherapy, and recovery support in collaboration with a multidisciplinary team of mental health care professionals including psychiatrists, social workers, and nurses.