Pictured above: Drs. Oshrit Wanono and Amanda Sawyer.
There are fewer than 100 active child psychiatrists in Ontario and just 26 in Toronto, leaving areas of the province entirely unserved, according to the Ontario Psychiatrics Association. The shortage means young people often face long wait times for care at a time when early intervention is key to recovery.
CAMH is helping boost capacity in child psychiatry by exposing medical students to the field through the Dr. Susan Bradley Scholarship in Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Scholarship.
“This opportunity is truly like none other and will definitely help in my career exploration as I move forward and consider psychiatry as a residency program,” said Jerome Satkunam, a Queen’s University student who spent this summer learning at CAMH, thanks to the scholarship. “I am forever grateful for it and feel very ready to hit the wards in clerkship because of it.”
The scholarship gives up to two first- and second-year medical students a better appreciation of child and adolescent psychiatry each year. Recipients spend 10 to 14 weeks during the summer gaining hands-on clinical experience in child and adolescent psychiatry at either CAMH or the Hospital for Sick Children, where the scholarship’s clinical experience is co-cordinated by Dr. Oshrit Wanono, a staff psychiatrist in CAMH’s Child, Youth and Family Service, and Dr. Irfan Mian at SickKids.
“The goal is to foster interest in child psychiatry by giving students that really hands-on experience early in their education with the hope that it will inspire them to pursue a career in child psychiatry,” says Dr. Wanono. “It’s really important to raise the capacity of child psychiatrists in Canada and we know clinical exposure is key when medical students decide what specialty to choose. The reality is that most medical students get very limited exposure to child psychiatry during their medical training.”
For Satkunam, Dr. Wanono built a two-week schedule that enabled him to learn from her and other CAMH psychiatrists. His experience also included outpatient follow-up, group psychotherapy, the urgent care clinic, the Gerald Sheff & Shanitha Kachan Emergency Department and telepsychiatry, and he joined the incoming third-year students in July for their Child and Adolescent orientation at SickKids.
He said the experience was a great opportunity to explore child psychiatry without worrying about the stakes of actual practice.
“I admit, there were multiple times this summer where I shied away from participating in interviews out of fear of messing up,” he says. “But soon enough, I was very motivated to take the lead on interviews because I realized messing up is a natural and important part of the learning experience for everyone.”
For Dr. Amanda Sawyer, the scholarship helped confirm what she already believed: that child psychiatry was the right field for her. She received the scholarship in 2009 after her first year of medical school at the University of Manitoba, and has been a CAMH staff psychiatrist for the past year.
“I can think of so many things I learned from the scholarship that I still use today in my practice,” said Dr. Sawyer, who split her scholarship time between CAMH and SickKids. “Because I spent a lot of time with interdisciplinary teams, I understand the processes of different teams so much better. It also set me up with life-long mentors.”
The Dr. Susan Bradley Scholarship was created by philanthropists active in child and youth psychiatry, CAMH Foundation Board Chair Jamie Anderson and Patsy Anderson.