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Children's Hospital of Atlanta at Egleston

Egleston, a part of the recently merged Egleston and Scottish Rite Children’s Hospitals now called Children’s Hospital of Atlanta (CHOA), is a 230 bed private teaching hospital that serves as one of the primary inpatient facilities for the Emory Department of Pediatrics. Egleston provides both primary care for children, adolescents, and their families in metropolitan Atlanta and tertiary care for patients throughout the Southeast. At this time the only child psychiatric service at Egleston is an active consultation/liaison service highly focused on children with chronic illnesses.

Clinical Services

Medical Director: Adolph Casal, M.D. who is a CHOA employee on the voluntary faculty of the Division of Child and Adolescent Psychiatry/Department of Psychiatry

Location: ECH — Dr. Casal also directs the C/L services at CHOA - Scottish Rite (SR). Emory residents do not presently participate at Scottish Rite Hospital.

Faculty and Staff

  • Teaching Attending: Sandra Sexson, M.D.
  • One part-time Clinical Psychologist (Emory faculty paid by Egleston)
  • One part-time Clinical Nurse Specialist
  • Child and Adolescent Psychiatry Residents (1 FTE)
  • Psychology Trainees
  • Emory and Visiting Medical Students on elective (average about 4 annually)

The ECH Pediatric C/L Service provides diagnostic, consultative and treatment services for emotional and behavioral symptoms in children and adolescents who are patients on the medical/surgical services at ECH. A particular focus of this service is the emotional component of the total care of the acutely or chronically ill children and adolescents and their families. The C/L Service sees approximately 30 consults per month. Most consultations except for those to the emergency services are on-going and require a minimum of two contacts and frequently daily/QOD contacts for weeks to months. Automatic consults occur on most organ and bone marrow transplant patients. Child and adolescent psychiatry residents on rotation consulted on almost 200 patients during the 2000-2001 academic year, with age range from 2 to 18 years, with the most frequent diagnoses being adjustment disorders, depression, conversion disorders, and psychological factors affecting a physical disorder with a small but significant number of psychotic disorders. Child psychiatry residents backed up by Emory faculty attendings cover the Egleston emergency room at nights and on weekends.