dobbelsteincr [at] upmc [dot] edu
Christopher Dobbelstein, MD, completed his combined internal medicine / psychiatry training at Rush University Medical Center and fellowship training in psychosomatic medicine at George Washington University.  He is board-certified in internal medicine and psychiatry and plans to take the psychosomatic boards in 2011.  He is clinical assistant professor in Psychiatry at the Western Psychiatric Institute and Clinic at University of Pittsburgh Medical Center.
            Dr. Dobbelstein supervises psychiatry residents on the inpatient consultation-liaison service, where he spends about half his time.  He also holds a liaison position, mostly dedicated to seeing outpatients, in the transplant institute, sees patients in the psychiatric Emergency Room, and currently spends 10% of his time doing primary care in patients with serious mental illness.  He is also helping to develop a combined training curriculum for the Psychiatry/Family Practice residency at UPMC.
            Dr. Dobbelstein says he loves what he does; he says he had to train in med/psych because he would have felt deficient if he had done anything else.  He feels that combined training was a challenge (though worth it), and he advises students contemplating combined training to talk with actual doctors who have completed combined training.  Overall, he says, “I love that each day of my week is different – it makes it harder to be burned out.”