Introduction
Welcome! For over four decades, the Inova Fairfax–GW Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry fellowship program has provided fellows with a training experience that is based on intellectual curiosity, compassionate care, formal and bedside teaching, mentorship, and scholarship aimed at developing skilled consultation-liaison psychiatrists. Started by Dr. Thomas Wise, past President of the American Psychosomatic Society and the Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry (formerly APM), graduates of this ACGME-accredited program have gone on to a broad range of careers in academic psychiatry, medical education, government agencies, not-for-profit healthcare systems, as well as private practice.
Our program is based at Inova Fairfax Hospital, a 923-bed tertiary care hospital located in the Washington DC Metro region, with Northern VA’s only Level I Trauma Center, the 5th busiest obstetrics program in the U.S., a multiorgan transplant center, as well as residency and fellowship programs in internal medicine, pediatrics, surgery, family medicine, and obstetrics-gynecology. Due to our geographic location, fellows interact with patients from diverse cultural, educations, and socioeconomic backgrounds who are facing anywhere from common medical conditions to highly complex diagnostic challenges.
Educational Philosophy
The decision whether to pursue fellowship training in CL psychiatry is often not a simple decision as one must balance intellectual, personal, financial, and career factors. We understand that choosing to do a fellowship year is not merely an extension of residency training and with this in mind, we try to provide fellows with the clinical experience, education, mentorship and progressive independence aimed at fostering development of advanced CL psychiatry skills and knowledge. From early on, we encourage fellows to act as junior attendings on the inpatient CL service, overseeing their own team of students and residents. In the outpatient setting, they provide patient care as well as staff education, care coordination, and indirect guidance. Fellows are gradually provided more opportunities to function closer to the level of attending physicians, such as overseeing CL service teaching rounds. In order to enable our fellows more time to focus solely on CL psychiatry, they have minimal responsibilities in the evaluation and care of patients admitted due to suicide attempts or intentional overdoses, as we believe fellows come with significant experience in this during their residency training.
Faculty
The program is under the direction of Catherine Crone, M.D. FACLP, FACP, FAPA, Vice Chair of Education and CL Service Director. She is past president of ACLP with expertise in transplant psychiatry. She is active within ACGME, ABPN, ACLP, APA, and ACP, and has particular interest in psychiatric education, fellowship training, and career mentoring.
Rushi Vyas, M.D., Assistant CL Service Director, also serves as clerkship director, and specializes in perinatal psychiatry/women’s mental health. He is highly skilled at liaison psychiatry and provides much of the day-to-day clinical supervision, education, and support to the fellows.
Sherif Meguid, M.D., directs the Inova Neuropsychiatry Clinic, a collaborative effort between the Departments of Psychiatry and Neurosciences. He is an awarded-winning lifelong educator who plays a crucial role in the supervision and training of our fellows.
Sermsak Lolak, M.D., FACLP, has expertise in psychooncology and mindfulness-based approaches, and heads the Psychooncology Clinic, part of the Inova Schar Cancer Center and Life with Cancer Program.
Thomas Wise, FACLP, FACP, DFAPA, Chair Emeritus, provides seminars on in core CL psychiatry topics and administrative psychiatry, as well as mentoring and guidance on academic projects.
Michael Sheridan, Sc.D. in epidemiology, expert in statistics and scientific methodology, provides support to fellows on research projects.
In addition, our program also has several other clinical faculty members with training in CL psychiatry and expertise in women’s mental health, psychodynamic psychiatry, administrative psychiatry, community psychiatry, and other areas, who participate in teaching rounds and seminars.