Emergency Psychiatry Service
Director: Amanda Wilson, MD
Faculty:
Alan Lewis, MD
Eric Rueth, MD
Our Emergency Psychiatry Service (EPS) is embedded in both the Emergency Department of the Vanderbilt University Adult Hospital and the Vanderbilt Psychiatric Hospital.
- The Adult Emergency Department manages approximately 70,000 patient visits per year, with close to 4,000 patient encounters for psychiatric reasons. Our goal is to begin emergent psychiatric interventions in the emergency department with empathy, care and respect.
- The Psychiatric Assessment Service (PAS) in the Vanderbilt Psychiatry Hospital is staffed by master’s prepared social workers and provides mobile crisis services and interventions 24/7 year round.
Service: Psychiatrists provide direct patient care services and staff all cases seen by Master's prepared crisis clinicians or psychiatry residents. Typical consultations provided by the emergency psychiatrist include assessments of safety/risk, suicidal ideation, depression, first break psychosis, addiction, agitation, dementia and capacity. We also provide expert consultation for differentiation of primary psychiatric illness from neurologic/medical etiologies and work closely with our fully accredited Vanderbilt University Police Department. In 2019, we began providing medication assisted treatment (MAT) with buprenorphine in the Adult Emergency Department.
For 24/7 access to our services, please click here.
Education: We are the primary site for emergency psychiatry training in the Vanderbilt Psychiatry Residency Training Program. All Psychiatry PGY-2 residents rotate with the EPS service. We offer elective experiences for Emergency Department residents, PGY-3/4 psychiatry residents and psychiatric nurses.