TRIPLE BOARD CAREERS

Completing a Triple Board residency program offers trainees diverse career paths. Graduates are able to integrate their training and pursue unique careers in child psychiatry, pediatrics, adult psychiatry or the integration of specialties. Triple Board trainees have worked in a myriad of settings including but not limited to multi-specialty pediatric practices, academic medicine, research positions, state mental health systems, juvenile justice centers, private inpatient and outpatient facilities, consult/liaison services and residency training programs.

Although a majority of Triple Board residents focus their careers in child psychiatry, many continue working in pediatrics and/or general psychiatry. The shortage of child psychiatrists in the United States and the availability of careers nationwide are major reasons that many graduates focus on child psychiatry. The diverse training Triple Board offers allows graduates to work in rural and underserved areas due to their comprehensive training in caring for children and their families. Working in academic medicine as a faculty member in both pediatrics and psychiatry departments is another arena to combine graduates’ Triple Board training. In academic settings, Triple Board graduates often serve to bridge the gap between pediatricians and child psychiatrists, who usually work in different settings. This can include research on patient populations where mental health effects physical health, for example teenagers who are poorly compliant with the management of their diabetes. Triple Board graduates are ideal candidates for educating pediatricians about psychiatry, or psychiatrists about pediatrics, because they understand both work cultures, and can present the materials with an understanding of the needs of the audience.

After completion of the triple board program, some graduates have further specialized their training by pursuing subsequent fellowships. Graduates have completed fellowships in such areas as infant psychiatry, forensic child psychiatry, research and pediatric hematology-oncology.

Graduates of Triple Board residency programs have the opportunity to use their multiple skills in a variety of settings. This flexibility is one of the many attractive features of training in such a program.

A sampling of careers of triple board graduates are listed below:

• Integration of mental health services into a multi-specialty pediatrics group practice

• Residency Training Director for Triple Board program and/or Child Psychiatry Program

• Child psychiatry consultant to a cystic fibrosis clinic

• Director of Inpatient Child Psychiatry

• Integration of basic science and clinical research in the study of psychiatric disorders of childhood (e.g., autism and ADHD)

• NIMH research fellowship with subsequent academic research career

• Child psychiatry consult/liaison work in the juvenile court system

• Outpatient child psychiatry in public mental health system

• Eating disorders program director with management of both medical and psychiatric problems

• Pediatrician and child psychiatrist for a child abuse team

Evolution!

In the beginning, we could not foresee where Triple Board training would take our graduates. Over time we are seeing that Triple Board program graduates will fill roles we could not have foreseen. New clinics can now be developed where monies for medical care and psychiatric care are combined so the issues of a complicated group of patients can be addressed. This could be a medical and psychiatric clinic for young patients with epilepsy, or a genetic syndrome, or even a clinic that addresses the many needs of children in foster care, all under one roof. Triple Board graduates will lead this evolution in health care!