Session 18

If you're a medical student, we are about to launch a new podcast called Board Rounds Podcast, where we focus on the USMLE and COMLEX Step 1 and Level 1. Check us out at MedEdMedia.com. It's going to be a co-branded podcast with MedQuest so stay tuned!

Today's guest is Dr. Jacqueline Hubbard, a private-practice Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist. Hear her thoughts on the specialty, what you can do to get involved, and see if this is something you might take interest in.

[01:55] Choosing Her Specialty

Jacqueline knew she wanted to go to medical school when she was a sophomore in college. Then in medical school, she narrowed down her choices. Having interest in both Pediatrics and Psychiatry, she ended up picking psychiatry and decided on the Child and Adolescent Fellowship.

When she was on Pediatrics, she felt like she was being rushed as she wanted to talk more to the patients instead of just doing the physical exam. She wanted to always have more time to sit down and get to know the patients on a deeper level.

Just like in Pediatrics, there is a lot of parent involvement in her specialty, education is one. She talks a lot about parenting skills, behavior modification, and positive reinforcement.

[03:22] Traits of a Good Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist

Some of the traits that lead to being a good child and adolescent psychiatrist include being a good listener, empathetic, caring about the patient and looking at the patient as a whole, patient, inquisitive, and making sure you're looking at the big picture and ruling all the other things that may not just be your specialty like vitamin deficiencies or thyroid, etc.

[04:05] Private-Practice And Patient Types

After graduating, Jacqueline took a job working at a community mental health center where she ran an in-patient unit while doing some outpatient work. They had a residency program there and knowing she wanted to teach residents and medical students, she felt rushed working at the outpatient and thought she could provide better care if she worked for a private-practice model. Consequently, she took a job doing a group private-practice and ended up leaving it because she wanted to just do it on her own and made it exactly the way she wanted or if she were the patient, it's how she would want to go in and see someone.

As a Child and Adolescent Psychiatrist, Jacqueline treats patients with ADHD, depression, anxiety, OCD, autism spectrum disorders as well as those with bipolars, oppositional defiant kids, and for substance-use. She also sees some adults for binge eating disorder.

She is actually more particular about who she takes. She sees a lot of severe anxiety, OCD, depression in adults as well as some childhood issues. Kids with autism end up being adults with autism so she finds that Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists are good providers for those types of issues since they're used to treating them.

Jacqueline is double-board certified, with a board certification in General Psychiatry and another board certification in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry. She tries to focus her practice mostly on Child and Adolescent Psychiatry because of the huge demand considering that there is not that many Child and Adolescent Psychiatrists. She further explains that there are not many fellowship spots and a lot of medical students are not exposed to it as often as they could. Where she trained at University of South Florida, they only had two spots.

A general psychiatrist can technically see child and adolescent patients, basically depending on their comfort level. However, a lot of times during the general psychiatry training, they only had a month of child psychiatry and half a day in outpatient per week so you only got limited exposure to treating kids...