On July 1, Erin Kindred, MD, joined the Department of Psychiatry faculty as an assistant professor. She will work on the consult/liaison service and in the Psychiatric Emergency Services unit as an attending psychiatrist. On September 1, she added outpatient psychiatrist in rural areas to her list of job duties.
Dr. Kindred grew up in North Platte, Nebraska and graduated from UNMC. She finished her residency this spring in the Creighton/UNMC program. Kindred also completed a Behavioral Neurology Neuropsychiatry fellowship through the neurology department here at UNMC. Her time in Omaha made joining the UNMC faculty an easy decision.
“Overall, UNMC was the best fit for me, and will allow me to pursue advances in the future, and I feel I can make the most difference for patients by working for UNMC,” said Dr. Kindred. “I enjoy practicing psychiatry in a variety of settings, and I feel it has made me a more well-rounded psychiatrist to continue to work in these various settings.”
This fall, Dr. Kindred will spend 10 hours a week in an outpatient clinic at Columbus Community Hospital in Columbus, Nebraska. She hopes to establish more rural clinics in the future.
“I’ll be seeing adult and geriatric psychiatric patients, and hope to see patients in a capacity as a neuropsychiatrist at some point in the future, specializing in neurocognitive disorders, which would utilize my fellowship training. We also continue discussions to establish outpatient telepsychiatry clinics in rural areas.”
Dr. Kindred’s interest in psychiatry grew when she lived in North Platte, a town of roughly 24,000 people located four hours from Omaha or Denver, Colorado. After realizing the lack of behavioral healthcare around North Platte, she decided to go to medical school with the intent of becoming a psychiatrist.
“In North Platte, I worked in a group home for teenage girls, many of whom had psychiatric issues. Through my work there, I witnessed the number of patients who had to wait many months or travel a great distance just to see a psychiatrist,” said Dr. Kindred. “This was further reinforced when some of my own family members struggled with finding access to a psychiatrist and other mental health care in rural Nebraska. I had been interested in psychology for a long time, but I became interested in the medical side of mental illness as well, which made psychiatry a natural fit. My experiences in medical school in inpatient psychiatry and on the consult service as well as being involved with the psychiatry interest group and BHECN only reinforced my passion for mental health care.”