Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship

Training future leaders to provide excellent integrated psychiatric care for the medically ill

The Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship program trains fellows to deliver excellent psychiatric care to patients with complex health conditions in a variety of medical and surgical settings. Graduates of the program will be prepared to educate and lead trainees, colleagues and the health care system in caring for this complex patient population.

The Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship is an ACGME-accredited one-year program that accepts up to two fellows per year. Fellows will have strong clinical experiences and a variety of opportunities for inpatient and outpatient electives. This program nurtures the fellow’s clinical, research, teaching and administrative skills, according to the fellow's individual goals.

What is consultation-liaison psychiatry?

Consultation-liaison (CL) psychiatry is an exciting and growing ABPN board-certified subspecialty of psychiatry. Consultation-liaison psychiatrists provide psychiatric care to individuals with complex health conditions in both inpatient and outpatient medical and surgical settings. CL psychiatrists have strong knowledge of how to help individuals cope with illness, how medical illnesses and medications can produce psychiatric symptoms, and how to adjust the care of underlying psychiatric illnesses in the medical setting. CL psychiatrists can see the full range of psychiatric conditions that may present in a medical setting, or they may have an area of subspecialization, such as psycho-oncology, transplant psychiatry or women’s mental health.

If you are interested in learning more about CL psychiatry, check out the Academy of Consultation Liaison Psychiatry’s website for more information.

Apply

Applicants may email the program director, Emily Holmes, MD, or program coordinator, Linda Dye, with any questions about the application process.

Application Details

Program Director's Welcome

Thank you for your interest in the Consulation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship! Here in Indianapolis, we have a wealth of clinical settings, research mentors, and teaching opportunities available to our fellows. In addition to the full breath of typical CL clinical experiences, our clinical partner IU Health is home to an extremely busy liver transplant center and one of the few multivisceral transplant centers in the country. Additionally, we have faculty with unique expertise in functional disorders, toxicology and ICU survivorship. Fellows can participate in IU School of Medicine's Dual Fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Clinical Ethics, a unique opportunity to become versed in clinical ethics frameworks and obtain ethics consultation experience. We recognize that each fellow has unique professional and personal goals, and we are invested in providing our fellows with personalized training to develop skills for any path they might take. Though relatively young, our fellowship has a growing footprint with alumni in Indiana and around the country. We hope to add you to our network!

Emily G. Holmes, MD, MPH
Program Director, Consulation-Liaison Psychiatry Fellowship

What’s special about our program?

Flexible personalized training: breadth of teaching opportunities and the ability to dive deep into a specific area of focus.
Dual Fellowship in Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry and Clinical Ethics: Develop CL psychiatry and clinical ethics expertise in a single academic year.
Mentorship and networking: A supportive, friendly team and alumni network dedicated to your development, during fellowship and beyond.

Testimonials

“The year spent at IU has been an invaluable experience. I cannot speak highly enough about the faculty, my co-fellow, the team and its dynamics, and the quality of the institution and medical care provided here. The education will certainly facilitate caring for patients with unusually complex medical conditions throughout my career. This experience was particularly rewarding as the fellowship was able to accommodate co-enrollment in a separate fellowship for clinical ethics. I highly recommend both fellowships and the unique opportunity to concurrently engage in two such complementary programs.”

Sarah Kong, DO
Class of 2025

“I am grateful for my experience in the IU School of Medicine CL Psychiatry Fellowship! The faculty are excellent mentors who helped me hone skills not just in clinical care, but in leading an interdisciplinary team. They impressed upon me, by discussion and by example, that a true leader does not carry the team single-handedly but helps all members to bring their strengths into play for the best care of the patient. At IU School of Medicine, fellows get to work with students and residents in a wide variety of clinical settings, and I greatly enjoyed helping my learners grow in compassion, confidence and medical knowledge. I highly recommend IU School of Medicine to anyone interested in CL fellowship for the balance of genuine care for people and clinical excellence.”

Sara Culleton, MD, PhD
Class of 2022

“The training and clinical experiences through the CL Psychiatry Fellowship at IU School of Medicine gave me the opportunity to develop expertise in managing psychiatric issues in medically complex patients across a number of diverse settings. It also deepened my ability to navigate medical-psychiatric interfaces, interdisciplinary collaboration and systems-based care — skills that remain essential in my current role. Those experiences have helped propel my career in a variety of clinical and leadership environments that would not have been possible otherwise!”

Shariff Tanious, MD
Class of 2021