Elizabeth Wheeler, MD
1997-1992
Director of Child and Adolescent Services
Bradley Hospital
“I believe Triple Board training has given me a lens and confidence to integrate medical knowledge into the way I approach cases perhaps with greater ease than colleagues who have come a different route.”
I chose triple board at Brown because I was the medical student representative to the medical faculty council at Brown during the development of the concept and was excited to be part of the initial cohort paving the way in the translation of the concept into reality. In fact, I left journalism and went to medical school to become a psychiatrist and became intrigued by pediatric medicine. Like so many others I felt that intervening early with children and families would be difficult but also rewarding. Child psychiatry at its highest level of functioning is a personally challenging area with a pressing need for growth and development especially in the nexus between mind and body as well as in the development of our understanding of the science underlying who we are genetically, developmentally, experientially, relationally, psychodynamically. The complexity of child psychiatry intrigues and challenges me to stay intellectually and emotionally alert... and honest. And humble.
I am at Bradley Hospital wearing both clinical and administrative/management hats. I believe I retain a sense of identity as someone trained in pediatrics and quite comfortable with that broad background. Although Bradley is a psychiatric hospital, I certainly use my background in pediatrics to address pediatric issues as they arise. In addition and more abstractly I believe Triple Board training has given me a lens and confidence to integrate medical knowledge into the way I approach cases perhaps with greater ease than colleagues who have come a different route. It's hard to say anything definitive because as we all know someone else may have come to the same place but I suspect it was through greater individual effort. Triple Board worked for me. It was extremely hard work...long hours, lots of responsibility, quite intense.