By Dylan Golomb, MD
Chief Resident
Eastern Virginia Medical School
Norfolk, VA
Due to the psychiatry residency program at EVMS once again securing a class of six new residents this year, the program has been able to pilot a new night float system. By allowing night-time coverage to be nearly continuous across one resident who does not have other daytime obligations, we are able to increase our program’s presence in the hospital. This is a vast improvement over our previous at home pager call system where the resident would still work the following day if they had daytime obligations, which typically occurred five days of the week. With on-site night float, day services are able to sign out more work than in the past and limit instances of staying after normal day service hours to finish work, which we hope will decrease resident burnout and work compression. We intend to collect feedback and wellness measures throughout the year to evaluate the night float’s impact, but we anticipate it will lead to less exhaustion and a more consistent schedule without any weekday night call shifts when not assigned to night float.
Our program has also welcomed new faculty in the past several months.
- Dr. Abbey McLean (residency class of 2022), a recent program graduate, will remain affiliated with the program as the attending on the consult-liaison service that was previously attended by Dr. David Spiegel.
- Dr. Abigail Mansfield (residency class of 2013), has joined as faculty and is currently attending the ED psychiatric service.
- Dr. Kelsey Johnson (residency class of 2021), also a previous EVMS psychiatry residency graduate, is returning to attend our geriatric experience, with the goal to hopefully reopen a unit in Sentara Norfolk as an inpatient geriatric psychiatric unit. This service will also assist the ED psychiatric service with geriatric patients.
Recent departures from the program for further training include Anastasia Samaras, who is pursuing a geriatrics fellowship in Boston, MA and Ivan Krasnov, who fast-tracked into a child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship program in Philadelphia, PA.
With the opening of CHKD’s new child psychiatric building, Norfolk will be home to a child and adolescent fellowship program of its own starting next year. The Pavilion is a 14-story state of the art structure on the campus of Eastern Virginia Medical Center.
