Talia Puzantian

I have a private consulting practice, Talia Puzantian: Clinical Psychopharmacology Consultation.  My website is www.taliapuzantian.com   My website is a living thing as I find myself updating it as my practice grows and changes.

In my practice, I provide a number of clinical psychiatric pharmacy services.  The majority of my time is spent providing clinical consultion to psychiatrists who are in private practice.  Many of these clients provide their patients psychotherapy and/or psychoanalysis in addition to pharmacotherapy.  I also provide consultation to health care systems in the form of formulary management, therapeutic guideline development and staff education in the area of psychotherapeutics.  I also spend some time writing, most recently for the Carlat Psychiatry Report.  From time to time, I also provide consultation directly to patients.

There is no typical day in my practice!  I have phone conferences scheduled with my psychiatrists who consult with me via phone.  In a one-hour phone consultation, we typically cover 4-6 patients.  I have email consultation requests which I field on an "as needed" basis from psychiatrist clients who prefer to send me their requests via email.  I also receive quick phone consultations for more immediate needs from my clients.  I have projects that I work on for some of my clients (putting together clinical summaries: most recently I provided a thorough review on psychotropics in pregnancy for a psychiatrist; working on my writing projects; etc).

In my previous work (teaching and working in inpatient psychiatry), I enjoyed most interacting with patients.  Now, I don't have that interaction but my most enjoyable part of the day is the reaction I get from my psychiatrist-clients when they feel they can approach their difficult patients' pharmacotherapeutic interventions with a well-thought out plan and with greater confidence.

My practice continues to grow in terms of numbers of regular psychiatrist-clients, mostly through word-of-mouth referral.  I am approached from time to time with new opportunities (such as providing contract services to health care systems) so I feel that my practice will always grow and evolve.

My practice came to be via serendipity.  A former psychiatrist with whom I worked was constantly being asked, at home, by his wife who is also a psychiatrist, for advice regarding pharmacotherapy for the patients in her practice.  He finally told her "You need someone like Talia!".  She called me and the rest, as they say, is history.

Many of the psychiatrists with whom I work tell me that, while they enjoy working in a solo private practice, they miss the collaboration and the resources that they found working in other settings.  They find it difficult to keep up to date on all things psychopharmacology.  I fill that void for them.  As for patients, they get the benefit of an extra set of expert eyes reviewing their pharmacotherapy.

I have found demand for my services to be at a good and constant level.  I network when I can to keep in touch with my potential client base, including speaking at state level psychiatric meetings.