Frequently Asked Questions — Addiction Medicine Fellowship at St. Elizabeth Youngstown Hospital
What are the strengths of the program?
- Teaching by highly knowledgeable and experienced faculty
- Excellence in patient care in multiple settings
- Fully accredited by the ACGME
- Staff-to-fellow ratio offers excellent opportunity for personalized teaching and supervision
- Organizational commitment to education with multiple medical and surgery residency training programs
- Research opportunities and supervision
- Technology
- Lifestyle
- Strong commitment to didactics and board preparation
How does being in a community-based program differ from an academic center?
Our community-based program allows significant direct patient contact and allows more responsibility for the care of the patients during training. This is the case in particular in the fellow's own longitudinal weekly outpatient clinic, but at the same time there is faculty support and supervision when needed. Our fellows communicate directly with our faculty as well as with other specialist attendings during rotations. You will see a variety of pathologies in all types of treatment settings based on patient acuity. We feel this kind of clinical experience prepares fellows to practice with confidence in essentially every conceivable setting after fellowship completion. As a community hospital with a long history in medical education, all physicians in Mercy Health Youngstown expect to work with fellows during patient care encounters and there is broad support for the addiction medicine fellowship throughout the Bon Secours Mercy Health ministry.
Can residents moonlight?
Fellows in good academic standing can moonlight when they meet all hospital and program requirements to do so, and this must be approved by the program director. Fellows who moonlight are responsible for arranging their own malpractice coverage and must only moonlight in the specialty of addiction medicine. Please note that moonlighting hours count toward duty hour requirements and fellows are not permitted to exceed these.
What is the availability of faculty?
Our fellowship is well supported with an excellent fellow-to-faculty ratio, and attendings are always available for questions or concerns. We have an “open-door” policy for fellows, and all faculty are approachable and welcome opportunities to teach or assist with problems. Formally, there are scheduled meetings, performance evaluations and educational sessions for fellows with teaching faculty, but fellows should always feel free to reach out to the program director in particular at any time should a problem or concern arise that they wish to discuss.