Department Profile

A BRIEF HISTORY OF THE UIC ADDICTION FELLOWSHIP:

In the early 1990’s, Surinder Nand, MD, then the Director of Residency Training and Education for the Department of Psychiatry at the University of Illinois Chicago College of Medicine, was asked by Boris Astrachan, MD, then Chairman of the Department of Psychiatry, to develop fellowship programs, one of them being in Addiction Psychiatry. Dr. Norman Miller, a recognized leader in the field of addiction, came to UIC at a time of rapid growth for the Department and was the first Addiction Psychiatry Fellowship Director. Sylvia Dennison, MD and Paul Harris, MD (now on the faculty of the Fellowship) respectively succeeded Dr. Miller. Rodney Eiger, MD succeeded Dr. Harris is the current Program Director and has been for the last fourteen years. Dr. Eiger is also the Chief of the various Addictions Programs at the Jesse Brown VAMC. Dr. Eiger comes to these current roles with over forty years of experience working in the field of addiction.  Over the years, the Fellowship has continued to evolve in the direction of providing a broad educational experience which more than satisfies the ACGME requirements for addiction fellowships. This broad educational experience in a variety of clinical settings is further sustained by a multidisciplinary faculty which represents a variety of professional experiences and expertise. Please see the attached roster of core faculty. The Fellowship has never been cited by ACGME for any deficiencies at least in the fourteen years of Dr. Eiger’s stewardship of the program. UIC “internal” reviews of the Fellowship have always been favorable. Graduates of the Fellowship have routinely rated this training experience highly and most have gone on to leadership roles in their respective workplaces. Beginning in 2016, the Fellowship began taking on two Fellows per year. With this change, the Fellowship has developed two educational “tracks”. One emphasizes UIC experiences; the other emphasizes VA experiences. This last track is particularly important for Fellows who are thinking about a career in VA healthcare. However, in practice, both tracks are almost identical and a considerable amount of flexibility, based on Fellow needs and interests, is available beyond the Fellowship’s required core experiences.