Triple Board Residency

Triple Board Residents train in Pediatrics, General Psychiatry, and Child and Adolescent Psychiatry ("Triple Board Program") to become skilled physicians who integrate the clinical knowledge and skills of pediatrics and psychiatry to provide outstanding clinical care for children and their families. In five years, Triple Boarders become board-eligible in all three disciplines and can practice in any of the three. More importantly, Triple Boarders often use this combined training to develop unique career paths that cross the traditional disciplinary boundaries.

Tulane Triple Board combines the unique strengths of an academic medical setting and the opportunities of New Orleans with the 30+ year history of Triple Board training in the country. Our residents, faculty, the departments, the unique curricular innovations, and our city create an incredible environment for learning to provide comprehensive physical and mental health care to children and their families.

Tulane's Faculty includes triple board graduates and an accomplished and diverse group of pediatricians, general psychiatrists, and child adolescent psychiatrists, who work in true collaboration with psychologists, social workers, lawyers, and other health professionals in the departments of Pediatrics and Psychiatry & Behavioral Sciences.

• Dedicated clinicians
• Talented teachers who have earned multiple departmental and university teaching awards
• Widely recognized child and family advocates
• Effective policy makers
• Experts in public health
• Internationally recognized researchers in such diverse areas as early childhood mental health, genetics, congenital renal disease, tuberculosis, and pediatric HIV. Tulane ranks in the top third of federal funding for pediatric research. Child Psychiatry faculty members receive funding from NIMH, SAMHSA, and the MacArthur Foundation.

Triple Board training depends upon collaboration among the three disciplines of pediatrics, general psychiatry, and child & adolescent psychiatry (CAP).

The pediatrics training environment at Tulane provides one of the most diverse residency experiences in the country. Residents are exposed to a variety of primary and tertiary health care systems within the umbrella of Children's Hospital New Orleans, including community outreach settings such as NOELA or the drop-in clinic at Covenant House.

The general psychiatry experience provides clinical opportunities in public mental health settings, private inpatient settings, work with veterans, and growing tele-psychiatry practice. The diversity of patient populations our residents treat is extraordinary. Residents treat patients from a wide range of ethnic backgrounds, socio-economic status, urban/rural, and varying levels of psychiatric impairment.

In CAP training experiences, residents expand their assessment and treatment skills. We believe that child mental health problems can be best understood with an understanding of the biological underpinnings of disorders, the psychological factors that exacerbate the disturbance or provide resilience, and the protective and risk factors in the family and social context. Our residents learn to apply this integrated approach working in inpatient and community settings, with children from infancy through adolescence.

Importantly, these three disciplines work together closely in the Triple Board training program and experiences in each discipline enhance the learning in the others. Tulane has a history of collaboration across traditional disciplinary boundaries even before the Triple Board Program began- many faculty members have joint appointments in CAP and pediatrics. Tulane also has a long history of combined residency programs - Medicine-Pediatrics, Medicine-Psychiatry programs have been established at Tulane for decades, creating a longstanding track record of interdepartmental collaboration!

• Triple Board Faculty - nationally recognized triple-board trained attendings and categorically trained pediatricians, psychiatrists, and child and adolescent psychiatrists
• Triple Board Clinic -five years of longitudinal care in pediatrics continuity clinic with supervision for physical and psychiatric issues by Pediatric and Triple Board attendings
• Triple Board Mentorship - opportunity to be mentored by experienced faculty members including multiple faculty members who are triple boarded themselves
• Triple Board Lunches - monthly lunches with residents and faculty
• Triple Board Retreat - annual meeting of all residents to review the program, provide feedback to triple board faculty, training directors, heads of each department and shape its future. Our residents also attend pediatric, psychiatry, and child and adolescent psychiatry retreats while they are rotating to connect with peers from all three disciplines.
• Triple Board Journal Club - discuss triple-board relevant articles with triple board faculty
• Triple Board Resident Social - some R&R as a group.

Bottom Line: Tulane Triple Board residency gives new doctors experiences that nurture and support their development into well-rounded, broadly thinking Triple Board physicians. Our commitment to your development of autonomy, responsibility, stewardship, and a sense of social justice are the pillars of the Tulane approach. If you want to be part of our community of scholars, if you are passionate about helping children and families, and if you want to work in supportive, stimulating and diverse clinical settings in a collegial interdisciplinary environment, you may be a great fit for Tulane Triple Board!