TRAINING RESOURCES—Community Mental Health

Public Academic Liaison (PAL)

The Benjamin Rose Home

NEOHS - Beachwood

The PAL program was established in 1990 as a collaboration between the Department of Psychiatry at University Hospitals of Cleveland and the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board. PAL provides residents and faculty from the Department of Psychiatry an opportunity to provide clinical and educational services to consumers and staff through the agencies of the Cuyahoga County Community Mental Health Board, while providing a mechanism for recruiting new and energetic psychiatrists to the system, and a conduit for collaboration in developing new programs, clinical services and research in community mental health. Since 1990, PAL residents and faculty have provided over 80,000 hours of direct clinical services and 2,500 hours of in-service educational services to the agencies and the community, while supporting the educational efforts of the residency training program and encouraging psychiatry residents to pursue careers in community service.

PAL has been repeatedly recognized nationally as a model program in public academic collaboration.

How PAL Works

Upper level residents spend one day per week providing services on-site at one of several community mental health centers serving indigent and seriously mentally ill patients in a multidisciplinary setting. PAL residents are in their third and fourth year of post-graduate training in psychiatry, and are licensed to practice medicine and to prescribe medications in the State of Ohio. PAL residents provide clinical services under the direct supervision of the PAL faculty, who are members of the full-time and clinical faculty of the Department of Psychiatry at Case Western Reserve University. The full-time faculty are also on staff at University Hospitals of Cleveland, the primary clinical affiliate of the CWRU School of Medicine.

The PAL residents are assigned one-half day weekly for one to two years at one of several agencies of the Mental Health Board, where they and their faculty supervisors provide medical/somatic services, including psychiatric diagnoses and prescribing medications to agency consumers. They also participate in multidisciplinary treatment team meetings, and provide “in-service” educational offerings to agency staff and on occasion consumers. Adult psychiatry residents have additional experiences in some of the “specialty” programs such as the SAMI (dual diagnosis) program and Mental Health Services.

Since 1995 PAL has provided Child Psychiatry residents and faculty to provide services for the child agencies of the Board, and since 1997 clinical experiences in child Psychiatry for the general (adult) psychiatry residents. In addition to clinical supervision and experiences in the community, the residents participate in an extensive educational series on community mental health services at the University, and an ongoing “Community Clinical Case Conference” series rotated from agency to agency over the course of the year. Residents and faculty are assigned in collaboration between the Chief Clinical Officer and the PAL Program director, who attempt to balance the needs of the community with the ability of the agencies to provide a stable educational environment.

As PAL is seen as a “system resource,” residents and faculty have served several different agencies over the past ten years, including: