Beginning July 1, eight physicians will train at Gateway Behavioral Health in Savannah to become board-certified psychiatrists.  Gateway, one of the Georgia Department of Behavioral Health and Developmental Disabilities’ (DBHDD) 25 community service boards, serves eight coastal counties in South Georgia.
 
Gateway was accredited in 2018 as an Institutional Sponsor of Graduate Medical Education for training psychiatrists by the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education.  Training in medical specialties starts after graduation from medical school.  Psychiatry, at four years in length, is among the longest and most thorough of the specialty trainings in medicine.
 
The residents are members of the CSB’s inaugural class.  Beginning with this class, Gateway anticipates graduating six to eight psychiatrists a year who will be well-equipped and eligible to become board-certified psychiatrists.
 
“Though from various backgrounds, these residents share several things in common: a strong work ethic, willingness to train four years to reach a dream, and a passion for public mental health,” said Mark Johnson, M.D., Gateway’s CEO.
 
“Both nationally and in Georgia, there is a shortage of psychiatrists,” said DBHDD Commissioner Judy Fitzgerald.  “While this is not news, the shortage of those working in non-profit settings and in the ‘safety net’ is especially acute.  We hope that through this new program, we will graduate psychiatrists who want to stay in Georgia and work in our public system serving some of our most vulnerable citizens.”
 
Ebony Gaffney, M.D., Ph.D., will serve as program director.  Dr. Gaffney has practiced psychiatry in Savannah for the past six years and looks forward to the community service board “training psychiatrists for the community who can be an integral part of the full continuum of care in the safety net.”
 
Gateway serves as the safety-net provider for the counties stretching from the Savannah River to the St. Mary’s.  Some counties, such as McIntosh and Long, are very rural.  Confronted with a need for psychiatrists in South Georgia, Gateway’s leadership began to explore establishing a psychiatry residency program in 2016.  The program will provide a new group of psychiatrists each year to work in community psychiatry.  Gateway and DBHDD hope that its success will inspire the creation of more community-based psychiatry programs.
 
The residency program will receive academic and research support through its affiliation with Mercer University School of Medicine, whose dean, Jean Sumner, M.D., serves on DBHDD’s board.  Family Medicine at Memorial Health University Medical Center, DBHDD’s Georgia Regional Hospital in Savannah, and both of Savannah’s federally qualified health centers, Curtis V. Cooper and J.C. Lewis, agreed to partner with Gateway to create the training program in community psychiatry.  Two other prominent partners in the launch have been the military psychiatric staff at nearby Fort Stewart and the Chatham County Board of Commissioners.  Various psychiatrists, neurologists, psychologists, and others have contributed to the program’s successful launch.  Psychiatrists from several medical schools consulted on the initiative, including Emory University’s Bill McDonald, M.D.