Program Overview
The Interventional Psychiatry Fellowship is a one-year, longitudinally integrated program that combines supervised clinical training, structured didactics, scholarship, teaching and professional development.
Rather than learning each treatment in isolation, fellows are trained to evaluate the patient comprehensively and determine when ECT, TMS, ketamine/esketamine, VNS or continued conventional treatment is most appropriate.
Clinical experiences occur primarily at:
- Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix: Fellows participate in academic medical-center interventional psychiatry, consultation and procedure-based care.
- Banner – University Medicine Interventional Psychiatry at Arcadia: Fellows gain longitudinal outpatient experience in consultation, neuromodulation, ketamine/esketamine treatment and follow-up. The interventional psychiatry practice is located at 4200 E. Camelback Road, Suite 107.
The College of Medicine – Phoenix already supports a broad psychiatry educational environment. Its psychiatry residency is ACGME-accredited and includes clinical training across Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix and multiple Phoenix-area sites, while the University's GME infrastructure serves as the sponsoring framework for Banner – University Medical Center Phoenix residency and fellowship programs.
Educational Goals
By completion of the fellowship, the fellow should be able to:
| Domain | Expected Capability by Graduation |
|---|---|
| Interventional Consultation | Perform comprehensive consultation for treatment-resistant and complex psychiatric illness and formulate a rational hierarchy of treatment options. |
| ECT | Evaluate candidates, understand indications and contraindications, participate in treatment planning and safely deliver ECT under appropriate supervision. |
| TMS | Evaluate candidates, prescribe treatment, understand targeting and dosing principles, supervise/deliver treatment and manage adverse effects and nonresponse. |
| Ketamine/Esketamine | Select appropriate patients, conduct pretreatment assessment, manage acute treatment and monitoring, evaluate response and develop continuation/maintenance strategies. |
| VNS | Evaluate appropriate candidates and provide supervised longitudinal management, including device interrogation/programming, parameter adjustment, adverse-effect assessment and response monitoring. |
| Measurement-Based Care | Integrate standardized symptom and functional measures into treatment selection and longitudinal decision-making. |
| Evidence Appraisal | Critically evaluate emerging interventional psychiatry evidence and translate it appropriately into clinical practice. |
| Research and QI | Design or participate in clinical research, outcomes research or quality-improvement work. |
| Teaching | Teach residents, medical students and multidisciplinary staff about interventional psychiatric treatments. |
| Leadership | Develop the clinical judgment and systems knowledge needed to build, lead or contribute to a high-quality interventional psychiatry service. |
Interventional Psychiatry Consultation
A dedicated consultation experience should be one of the core threads running through the fellowship.
The fellow should learn to answer four questions for every referral:
- Is the diagnosis correct?
- What constitutes adequate prior treatment?
- Which intervention best fits this patient's illness, risks and preferences?
- How should the intervention be integrated with longitudinal psychiatric care?
Annual Progression
The fellowship is best organized as a longitudinal program rather than four isolated three-month rotations, because continuous exposure allows the fellow to follow patients from consultation through acute treatment, response assessment and maintenance.
| Phase | Primary Developmental Focus |
|---|---|
| Opening Phase | Orientation, consultation framework, measurement-based care, treatment-resistant depression assessment, ECT/TMS/ketamine-esketamine foundations, research mentor selection. |
| Developing Phase | Increasing procedural responsibility, independent interventional evaluations with supervision, VNS programming exposure, scholarly protocol/project development. |
| Advanced Phase | Multimodality treatment selection, complex consultations, longitudinal maintenance care, teaching residents/students, data analysis or QI implementation. |
| Leadership Phase | Near-independent consultation under supervision, procedural competency sign-offs, teaching leadership, completion and presentation of scholarly project, career development. |