The UT Southwestern Department of Psychiatry provides a clinically oriented, 1-year fellowship in geriatric psychiatry accredited by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) to those who have successfully completed a 4-year program in general adult psychiatry. Two positions are available.

Upon successful completion of the Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship, fellows will be qualified to take the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology examination for Certification in the Subspecialty of Geriatric Psychiatry.

Clinical Experience

The UT Southwestern Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship has multiple training sites with a diversity in patient populations across all continuums of care. Our association with a geriatric medicine clinic and a sleep medicine clinic have provided unique experiences for the fellows, who gain experience in a variety of settings:

• Inpatient care
• Outpatient care
• Sleep medicine clinic
• Nursing home visits (e.g., at the Community Living Center, a VA nursing home, in Bonham)
• Consultation-liaison services (e.g., at the Dallas VA Medical Center)
• Nursing home consultation
• Neuropsychology clinic
• Evidence-based psychotherapy
• UT Southwestern Neurocognitive and Geriatric Psychiatry programs
• UT Southwestern Division of Geriatric Medicine

Fellows work in both public and private patient settings, such as nursing homes, Parkland Health & Hospital System and its outreach clinics, Dallas Veterans Affairs Medical Center, and UT Southwestern Medical Center.

A particular strength of this program is the strong multidisciplinary, team-based approach to caring for geriatric patients. Fellows work closely with a variety of disciplines to provide a high level of care to geriatric patients. Our commitment to education and a broad variety of training experiences are also strengths of this program.

Academics/Education

Fellows are supervised by specialty trained faculty: all faculty members have completed a geriatric psychiatry fellowship and are devoted full-time to the care of geriatric patients. Our geriatric psychiatry didactic series provides a broad, comprehensive, and evidence-based review of the essentials of geriatric psychiatry. Other educational experiences include monthly psychopharmacology conferences and psychiatry grand rounds at the Dallas VA Medical Center. In addition, UT Southwestern hosts psychiatry and geriatric medicine grand rounds weekly. Fellows receive opportunities to present at these conferences and grand rounds.

Ample opportunity is available for fellows to build skills in education. Interdisciplinary teaching opportunities with other UT Southwestern fellows, psychiatry residents and medical students, pharmacy residents and interns, psychology interns and post docs, and clinicians from a variety of other health care disciplines are available. Fellows oversee the clinical experience of residents and medical students at the VA and Parkland. Research experience is available for interested fellows. Fellows are part of the larger educational experience at UT Southwestern, a dynamic and growing first-rank research medical center that trains approximately 1,000 post-graduate residents and fellows in a wide variety of disciplines.

The UT Southwestern Geriatric Psychiatry Fellowship is located in the Dallas-Fort Worth metropolitan area, which was estimated in 2019 to be the largest metropolitan area in Texas and the fourth largest metropolitan area in the United States. This area is home to great cultural diversity and many indoor and outdoor recreational activities for a variety of interests. We are a family-friendly program with a low cost of living.