Dr. Vanessa Greenwood earned her undergraduate degree from Yale University and her medical degree from Cornell University School of Medicine. During her residency, Dr. Greenwood received the APA Addiction Medicine Award and was the Chief Resident of the Alcohol and Drug Treatment Program.
"I am currently an addictionologist in the department of Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine for Kaiser Permanente. Half of my time is spent in the inpatient setting, where my colleagues and I handle all of the inpatient addiction medicine admissions. Two of us are dual-boarded in Family Medicine and Psychiatry and we handle all the psychiatric and medical care for our patients. I also work in an outpatient setting with MDs, PhDs, LCSWs, and RNs, where we use a team approach to help our clientele. We do brief therapy, motivational interviewing, detoxes, psychiatric management, and family interventions. We incorporate not only traditional Western medicine but we also emphasize mind/body techniques and treatments.
The beauty of addiction medicine is that it is a fast-paced, challenging, and fascinating field with endless possibilities for future directions. In a few years I hope to co-manage various rehab and wellness facilities in southern California and also work as a consultant. I am presently known as the ‘young Spanish-speaking MD who can handle medical management and who is skilled in knowing the community resources for patients who ‘have nothing’’. What other residency program could I have learned how to integrate medicine and psychiatry, utilize my medical Spanish, and seamlessly maneuver through the ins and outs of San Diego community resources?
The Combined program has provided me with an amazing skill set. And I must say to all of you combos, that by the end of your residency, you will be able to handle ANYTHING. We are true leaders in our ‘field’. Drs. McCahill, Folsom, and Searles are true pioneers in academic medicine and community medicine and psychiatry. As I watch our alums, I realize that when you graduate from the combined program, you inevitably will have a career that is notable and/or ‘outside of the box’. And, at the end of your 5th year, you have the delicious dilemma of choice: the choice to do psychiatry, or medicine, or both or branch out and do something completely different. Choose wisely. ;)"