Attending Psychiatrist

Patients in crisis do not get a second first hour. This role exists so adults with serious mental illness receive timely, precise care—and leave safer, clearer, and better connected to what happens next. You will set the clinical standard for a busy inpatient service: diagnose accurately, treat decisively, and make the team around you faster and more consistent.

Performance Objectives

• Complete comprehensive psychiatric evaluations and risk assessments within the service’s admission window, and document a working diagnosis and initial plan the same day.
• Stabilize acute presentations—psychosis, severe mood episodes, suicidality, agitation, and substance-related crises—so length of stay and readmission risk fall without compromising safety.
• Lead daily treatment decisions, including medication changes, capacity questions, and level-of-care calls, and close each case with a discharge plan the receiving clinician can execute.
• Reduce preventable adverse events by running structured safety reviews on restraints, falls, medication errors, and elopement near-misses, and by changing the practice that caused them.
• Supervise residents, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants so their notes, orders, and handoffs meet your standard before they reach the chart.
• Partner with nursing, social work, and emergency medicine to cut boarding time and eliminate handoff gaps that delay treatment or discharge.
• Maintain board-level quality metrics—documentation completeness, seclusion/restraint use, and follow-up appointment rate—and correct variance within the reporting cycle.

Environment & Resources

• You lead an interdisciplinary inpatient team and report to the service medical director.
• Support includes dedicated nursing, social work, pharmacy consultation, and an electronic health record with order sets and decision support.
• Call coverage is shared. You have protected time for supervision, peer review, and quality work—not only direct patient care.
• Malpractice coverage, credentialing support, and a defined CME allowance are provided.

Essential Qualifications

• M.D. or D.O., completed psychiatry residency, and board certification or active board eligibility in psychiatry.
• Unrestricted state medical license, or eligibility to obtain one before start, plus DEA registration.
• Demonstrated inpatient attending experience managing high-acuity adult psychiatry, including involuntary treatment and complex medical comorbidity.
• Record of supervising trainees or advanced practice clinicians with documented improvement in their clinical work.
• Fluency with EHR documentation, restraint/seclusion standards, and suicide-risk protocols.
• Evidence you can hold a service to measurable outcomes—not only individual caseloads.

Why This Role

• Authority to change how the unit practices, not only how you practice.
• A team built to absorb volume so your time goes to decisions that change outcomes.
• Compensation and schedule designed for sustained attending work, including shared call.
• A placement path that prioritizes fit with the service’s acuity, culture, and leadership expectations.

If you can walk onto a unit, see what is unsafe or slow, and fix it while still carrying the sickest patients—apply. Send your CV and a short note on one outcome you changed as an attending.