Padala to Head Baptist Health-UAMS Psychiatry Residency Program
| LITTLE ROCK — Prasad Padala, M.D., MS, FACHE, a professor in the University of Arkansas for Medical Sciences (UAMS) Department of Psychiatry, has accepted the position of program director of UAMS’ new collaborative psychiatry residency program with Baptist Health.
The associate director for Clinical Innovations at the Central Arkansas Veterans Healthcare System’s Geriatric Research Education and Clinical Center (GRECC), Padala is a research scientist with UAMS’ Center for Health Services Research.
The Baptist Health-UAMS Psychiatry Residency Program will initially train four residents and will add four residency slots each year until there are 16 residents in training. The joint arrangement received its initial accreditation from the Accreditation Council for Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) and will begin in July 2022. While most of the rotations will take place at Baptist Health’s North Little Rock campus, others will be done on the UAMS campus, at Baptist Health campuses in Little Rock and Fort Smith, and at the North Little Rock Community Mental Health Center.
“We are very excited about the promise this program holds for the future of behavioral health training in Arkansas and, with the substantial growth in medical students choosing psychiatry, thrilled to have more psychiatry residency positions in the state of Arkansas,” said John Spollen, M.D., interim chair of the UAMS Department of Psychiatry and interim director of the UAMS Psychiatric Research Institute.
UAMS is the state’s only health sciences university, with colleges of Medicine, Nursing, Pharmacy, Health Professions and Public Health; a graduate school; a hospital; a main campus in Little Rock; a Northwest Arkansas regional campus in Fayetteville; a statewide network of regional campuses; and eight institutes: the Winthrop P. Rockefeller Cancer Institute, Jackson T. Stephens Spine & Neurosciences Institute, Harvey & Bernice Jones Eye Institute, Psychiatric Research Institute, Donald W. Reynolds Institute on Aging, Translational Research Institute, Institute for Digital Health & Innovation and the Institute for Community Health Innovation. UAMS includes UAMS Health, a statewide health system that encompasses all of UAMS’ clinical enterprise. UAMS is the only adult Level 1 trauma center in the state. UAMS has 3,485 students, 915 medical residents and fellows, and seven dental residents. It is the state’s largest public employer with more than 11,000 employees, including 1,200 physicians who provide care to patients at UAMS, its regional campuses, Arkansas Children’s, the VA Medical Center and Baptist Health. Visit www.uams.edu or uamshealth.com. Find us on Facebook, X (formerly Twitter), YouTube or Instagram.###