Addiction Medicine Fellowship
The Vanderbilt University Medical Center Department of Medicine and Division of Infectious Diseases offers a one-year ACGME-accredited fellowship in Addiction Medicine to provide a well-rounded educational and clinical training program in the prevention, evaluation, diagnosis, treatment, and recovery of people with substance use disorders (SUD), of those with substance-related health conditions, and of people who show unhealthy use of substances including nicotine, alcohol, prescription medications and other licit and illicit drugs.
The fellowship goal is to train the next generation of national leaders in clinical and academic Addiction Medicine and to prepare graduates for the Addiction Medicine certification examination offered by the American Board of Preventive Medicine. Consistent with this goal, our fellows deliver the highest quality substance use disorder care across Vanderbilt University Medical Center (VUMC) and in collaboration with our community partners, meeting the needs of diverse populations and those with significant social determinants of health burdens.
Fellows will contribute to SUD-focused education for medical trainees and clinicians in our community, and they will improve and personalize evidence-based SUD care for individuals and communities in the mid-South through mentored scholarship and research.
The fellowship program is designed to provide a 12-month intensive academic and training experience for applicants who are board certified in any relevant clinical specialty or who have recently become board eligible. Following completion of training, each fellow will be able to:
- Provide patient care that is compassionate, appropriate, and effective for the promotion of health and the identification of common medical and psychiatric problems related to addiction
- Apply knowledge in the biomedical, clinical, epidemiological sciences and social-behavioral sciences to their care of patients;
- Pursue a career focused on clinical care, research or teaching, health care leadership, and as a scholarly practitioner.
CLINICAL TRAINING
Fellows' clinical training sites span the SUD levels-of-care spectrum to develop well-rounded clinicians with experience across diverse patient populations and degrees of acuity. The Addiction Medicine fellowship works closely with Vanderbilt’s Addiction Psychiatry fellowship training program to provide core clinical experiences within Vanderbilt's Integrated Services for the Treatment of Addiction (VISTA) and community partners with Vanderbilt faculty support. Our training program incorporates individualized experiences designed to develop each fellow’s specialized interests within Addiction Medicine. Training experiences include:
- Addiction consultation to general medical and surgical inpatient services at Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital
- Medically supervised withdrawal and inpatient psychiatric stabilization on the specialized Co-occurring Disorders Unit at Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital
- High acuity outpatient stabilization in the low-barrier, multi-specialty VISTA Bridge Clinic
- Evidence-based group therapy for substance use disorder in the VISTA intensive outpatient program
- Maintenance SUD care in the outpatient interdisciplinary VISTA recovery clinic
- Outpatient SUD treatment for pregnant and postpartum individuals at the VUMC Firefly program
- Outpatient SUD treatment for people living with HIV at the Vanderbilt Comprehensive Care Clinic
- Community primary care-based outpatient SUD consultation and mental health co-management at The Meharry Clinic of Meharry Medical College
- Community-based methadone maintenance treatment
- Targeted clinical experiences in inpatient and outpatient chronic pain management
- Elective-based quarter with opportunities for training in the Tobacco Treatment Service at the Vanderbilt-Ingram Cancer Center, supervised individual psychotherapy cases using the Acceptance and Commitment Therapy (ACT) modality, clinical toxicology, and structured assessment of SUDs in professional populations, and LGBTQ Health.
CURRICULUM
Fellows have protected scholarly time with faculty support for board preparation, teaching, research, and academic writing. This curriculum is integrated with our allied Addiction Psychiatry fellowship, creating a shared learning space for fellows across these programs.
Academic Time: 10% FTE
Didactic seminars:
Weekly lectures with a board-preparation focus are augmented by additional specialty topics from active clinical services and research within the Division of Addiction Psychiatry, Vanderbilt Center for Addiction Research, and Addiction Medicine faculty. The curriculum emphasizes identification, assessment, diagnosis, and evidence-based treatment of the spectrum of substance-related and addictive disorders, alongside their medical and psychiatric comorbidities.
Faculty Supervision:
Clinical site: daily supervision with faculty for outpatient cases; daily rounding for inpatient/consult services, with weekly case conferences.
Psychotherapy: training in individual and group therapy as well as monthly motivational interviewing sessions that are recorded for fellow review and feedback.
Program Director: bi-weekly individual mentorship and career development.
Scholarly Work:
- QI curriculum: VUMC-sponsored GME-wide QI curriculum with the ability to scale a project to meet fellows’ interests.
- Scholarly project: one publication-quality project per year; potential projects include a literature review, book chapter, or data-based project, leveraging VUMC resources for data analysis and faculty mentorship.
- Writing workshop: fellows present scholarly projects to faculty round-table for feedback, aimed toward submission to a scholarly journal or national meeting.
- Observed lectures: fellows prepare and deliver lectures for a Tele-ECHO educational conference and for the clerkship or residency programs, with feedback from learners and faculty.
- Question-bank development project: fellows develop review questions from the didactic seminars, creating a resource for future board review while leveraging evidence-based learning techniques.
- Journal club: fellows present major findings and criticisms of an SUD-focused paper, alternating between landmark and new emerging-evidence literature.
OUR TRAINING SITE
Our faculty are comprised of individuals across multiple clinical and academic domains including Internal Medicine/Pediatrics, Infectious Diseases, Addiction Psychiatry, OB/Gynecology, Pain Medicine, Emergency Medicine, and research partnerships with faculty in the Department of Health Policy. Fellows in our program deliver specialty SUD care within an interdisciplinary and multi-specialty team that includes training faculty, advanced practice nursing, psychology, case management, social work, and recovery coaching.
VUMC is situated on the 330-acre campus of Vanderbilt University located in the heart of Nashville, Tennessee and includes the Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital, a tertiary care Level 1 Trauma Center with 1,000+ inpatient medical and surgical beds. Our Addiction Consult Service fields >1,100 SUD-specific consultations each year across VUAH, with demonstrated reduction in post-consult acute care utilization and marked increases in initiation of agonist medication for opioid use disorder (MOUD).
Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital (VPH) is an inpatient psychiatric facility on VUMC’s campus with 100+ beds in subspecialized units. The VISTA Bridge and Recovery Clinics are adjacent to VUMC’s campus in the Hillsboro Village neighborhood, with clinical spaces tailored to SUD population needs.
Populations served at these sites draw from a 65,000 square-mile catchment area stretching across Middle Tennessee, from southern Kentucky to northern Alabama. Fellows care for individuals living in urban and rural settings, medically underserved areas, and racially- and culturally-diverse communities.
Click here for a video tour of the VUMC campus.
LIFE IN NASHVILLE
Nashville blends cosmopolitan opportunities with community neighborhood living and offers endless options for entertainment, dining, and outdoor activities. Information about living in Nashville is collected for the Vanderbilt community here.
Fellows’ stipend and benefits information is located here. There are no in-person clinical obligations on weekends. Moonlighting opportunities require program approval.
DIVERSITY AND INCLUSION IN TRAINING
Our fellowship is committed to fulfilling the mission of our VUMC Office of Diversity and Inclusion, affirming its relevance across medicine and specifically in Addiction Medicine:
We will reflect the diversity of the populations we serve in our teams, programs, and communications and be inclusive in our processes and decisions. The populations we serve are increasingly diverse with growing health disparities, and the people working at Vanderbilt represent growing diversity.
Diversity and inclusion are fundamental to our success in reducing health disparities in the populations we serve. A workforce that is not only diverse but also inclusive in nature is more effective at crafting innovative solutions to the major challenges of health care and in executing on those solutions as a team.
Consistent with these values, our fellowship recruitment and selection process utilizes a holistic application review based upon AAMC recommendations.
Click here for the VUMC Office for Diversity Affairs.
INFORMATION FOR APPLICANTS
Successful completion of an accredited residency program by the start of the fellowship is required for matriculation to this PGY5 fellowship position.
We will accept applicants who have successfully completed training in any American Board of Medical Specialties residency or fellowship program.
The fellowship is designed to meet and exceed the defined ACGME Program Requirements for Graduate Medical Education in Addiction Medicine. The program received initial accreditation in 2018 and re-accreditation in 2021. Physicians who complete our fellowship program are eligible to sit for board examination in Addiction Medicine through the American Board of Preventative Medicine.
Our Addiction Medicine Fellowship Program uses ERAS for application submission and the NRMP Match for candidate selection. The application process calendar is shared across participating programs:
- July 6, 2022: ERAS opens for application submission
- July 20, 2022: ERAS releases applications to fellowship programs for review
- August – October 2022: virtual interviews with fellowship programs
- August 24, 2022: NRMP Match opens
- November 16, 2022: NRMP Match rank order list certification deadline
- November 30, 2022: NRMP Match Day
Information about the ERAS application process is here
Information about the NRMP Match process is here
Applications materials submitted through ERAS should include a personal statement describing interests, achievements, and career goals within Addiction Medicine; standardized data from the applicant’s curriculum vitae; current headshot photograph; USMLE I, II, III scores (or COMLEX equivalents); and any applicable information for IMG credentialing (e.g. ECFMG certificate, visa). Four letters of recommendation are required; one letter must be from the applicant’s residency Program Director.
Consistent with 2022 AAMC guidance, we will be conducting all applicant interviews virtually for the July 2022 recruitment cycle. An opportunity for in-person visits may be available pending public health conditions, and this would occur after NRMP rank order list certification to ensure an applicant’s ability to travel is not included in the selection process.
WANT TO LEARN MORE?
Please feel free to contact us to discuss your interest in our program. We want to provide all necessary data as you make the exciting and difficult decisions regarding where you will train in Addiction Medicine.
Thank you for considering training at Vanderbilt! This is an important time of need and growth for the field, and we are thrilled you are considering joining us in your next steps.
Katie White, MD, PhD
Addiction Medicine Fellowship Training Program Director
Jasmyne Mitchell
Addiction Medicine Fellowship Training Program Coordinator
jasmyne.mitchell@vumc.org