Consultation – Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship Program

USC, in conjunction with LA General Medical Center (formally known as LAC+USC), offers two positions annually for a one-year, ACGME-accredited fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry.

As Consultation-Liaison psychiatrists, we embrace the challenge and privilege of combining ever- increasing medical knowledge with interpersonal skills to affect powerful, lasting change for individuals whose suffering spans the interface of physical and mental health. Our mission is to train CL Psychiatrists to meet this challenge as expert clinicians, educators, and leaders— providing high-quality, evidence-based care, combating stigma through the advancement of knowledge, and promoting equitable and accessible healthcare for these often marginalized and underserved individuals.

Our casework is usually complex and challenging. Los Angeles General Medical Center and Keck Hospitals are centers of excellence for state-of-the-art clinical care, education, and research. We value completeness, accuracy, and an appropriately nuanced analysis in each and every consultation, and provide fellows the time and resources to meet these expectations. Training is oriented toward preparing fellows for practice in an area of psychiatry specific to consultation-liaison psychiatry with leadership opportunities in teaching and scholarship within our subspecialty. Rotations provide fellows opportunities to gain expertise in both inpatient and outpatient settings and to develop clinical research interests and supervise trainees in an academically enriching environment.

Program Overview

Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellows are trained to utilize the bio-psycho-social model and to become familiar with a variety of treatment modalities including pharmacological, cognitive–behavioral and family interventions. We believe that consultation-liaison contributes an essential element to medicine’s multidisciplinary teamwork approach.

We advocate for the special needs of mentally ill patients in non-psychiatric medical care settings and improve the care of medically ill patients by reducing emotional barriers to care.

Our casework is usually complex and challenging. Los Angeles General Medical Center and Keck Hospitals are centers of excellence for state-of-the-art clinical care, education and research. We value completeness, accuracy and an appropriately nuanced analysis in each and every consultation, and provide fellows the time and resources to meet these expectations. Training is oriented toward preparing fellows for practice in an area of psychiatry specific to consultation-liaison psychiatry with leadership opportunities in teaching and scholarship within our subspecialty.

Commitment to Diversity

We are aligned with USC Department of Psychiatry and the Behavioral Sciences and the Academy of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry (ACLP)’s commitment to diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging. Diverse voices are essential to providing different perspectives and broadening understanding of human experiences across the lifespan, both of which are critical in our careers as consultation-liaison psychiatrists. We are proud to serve a patient population in East Los Angeles that encapsulates a wide spectrum of racial, cultural, sexual, religious, and socioeconomic backgrounds. Especially at Los Angeles General Medical Center, as one of the largest public hospitals in the United States and single largest healthcare provider in Los Angeles County, our mission is to promote equitable and accessible healthcare for marginalized and underserved individuals. Accordingly, we have a responsibility to recruit and support a workforce that is more representative of the diversity in our community, and hope to do our part in narrowing the national gap of under-represented minority physicians in the field of consultation-liaison psychiatry.

Our fellows receive dedicated curriculum on structural psychiatry topics and participate in monthly social justice grand rounds and regular trainings sponsored through our DEIB committee. Support resources are available within the Keck School of Medicine JEDI-WeST, USC/Los Angeles General Medical Center GME Affinity Groups, and Keck Medicine of USC. Fellows are encouraged to join DEIB efforts within our department and beyond, and are given dedicated time off clinical services to facilitate these interests.

Clinical Resources

Los Angeles General Medical Center is a 600-bed, publicly funded county hospital and tertiary care center offering full medical, surgical, emergency and intensive care services. Rotations at Los Angeles General Medical Center allow trainees to see patients on a variety of medical and surgical services and practice consultation-liaison psychiatry within the context of a large hospital system that has a culturally rich and highly diverse patient population.

Keck Hospital has rotations that allow trainees to see patients on a variety of medical and surgical services and practice consultation-liaison psychiatry within the context of a private hospital system that houses multiple subspecialties that are integrated into the multi-hospital system.

Outpatient rotations include maternal wellness, transplantation, integrated primary care, medically complex psychiatric consultation clinic, HIV clinic, IP and OP palliative care, and bioethics.

Teaching

Fellows work closely with medicine and surgery residents and medical students from Keck and Los Angeles General Medical Center. Fellows have opportunities to provide supervision and didactic presentations to PGY3 psychiatry residents, medicine and surgery residents, and medical students who are performing psychiatric evaluations. Teaching activities are required by our program.

Scholarship

Fellows are required to develop skills in scholarship by producing either a paper appropriate for peer-reviewed publication or a proposal for research. Regular meetings with faculty will support and facilitate this objective.

Education

In addition to direct supervision, lecture series and general didactic activities throughout fellowship training, fellows are encouraged to attend the annual meeting of the Academy of Consultation – Liaison Psychiatry in November.

Salaries and Benefits

Fellows are employees of the Los Angeles County. Fellows’ salaries are determined in negotiations among the county’s legal bargaining unit, the Council of Interns and Residents, and the county’s Department of Health Services.

Salary as of July 1, 2024

PGY5   $89,311

Benefits

How to Apply

For the 2023-2024 fellowship application year, the USC/LA General Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellowship will accept applications either through ERAS, or directly via email using the ACLP common application. All applications will be reviewed and considered equally regardless of how the application is submitted. Our goal is to make the application process as inclusive and smooth as possible for everyone.