St. Jude expands pediatric psychiatry capacity for children facing serious illness
St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital is recruiting a board-certified or board-eligible child and adolescent psychiatrist for a clinically focused faculty role in its Division of Psychiatry. The position sits inside the Department of Pediatric Medicine and is built around longitudinal care for children, adolescents, and young adults confronting serious medical illness, especially in a pediatric oncology environment where psychiatric symptoms often evolve alongside treatment intensity, developmental disruption, and family stress.
The opening is not structured as a grant-driven research post. Instead, it is designed for a physician whose primary work is direct care, consultation, teaching, and service development. In practical terms, the role reflects a growing recognition across pediatric cancer centers: psychiatric illness is not an optional add-on to oncology care, but part of the medical burden that shapes adherence, family functioning, recovery, and quality of life.
Longitudinal psychiatry in a medically complex oncology setting
The psychiatry division works closely with psychology, neuropsychology, social work, child life, music therapy, spiritual care, and case management, along with oncology, hematology, infectious disease, and other pediatric subspecialties. That structure matters because psychiatric presentations in pediatric cancer rarely arrive in isolation. Anxiety may track with procedures and scans; mood symptoms may emerge during prolonged treatment; trauma-related distress can follow diagnosis, hospitalization, relapses, or painful interventions; and developmental or neurocognitive changes may appear after chemotherapy, radiation, or other intensive therapies.
Many families remain in Memphis for months or years during treatment, creating a clinical environment that is different from the brief, episodic contact common in many consult-liaison services. Continuity gives psychiatrists the chance to watch symptom patterns unfold over time, refine medication decisions in the context of changing medical status, and build trust with children and caregivers who may otherwise cycle through repeated acute encounters without stable psychiatric follow-up.
Psychopharmacologic management in this setting can be especially delicate. Dosing decisions may need to account for overlapping toxicities, appetite change, sleep disruption, infection risk, neurocognitive effects, and evolving oncology regimens. A psychiatrist working in this service would be expected to approach those choices with careful interdisciplinary communication rather than isolated prescribing.
One-sentence reality: pediatric oncology psychiatry is often a long game, not a single consult.
Clinical faculty track favors bedside care, teaching, and service growth
The faculty track attached to the role is explicitly clinical. Physicians in this pathway devote most of their effort to patient care, while retaining flexibility to contribute to education, mentorship, quality improvement, program development, and clinically relevant scholarship that grows from day-to-day work.
That model is likely to appeal to psychiatrists who want a high level of autonomy without the expectation of building an independent funding portfolio. It also positions the service to mature through practical, patient-facing improvements rather than through laboratory or grant milestones. Bedside teaching, trainee supervision, seminars, and conferences are part of the academic environment, so the role blends clinical leadership with education rather than isolating one from the other.
For a psychiatrist entering pediatric oncology, that balance can be attractive. Children with complex medical disease often need more than symptom checklists; they need a clinician who can interpret distress in developmental context, coordinate with subspecialists, and remain available as treatment courses stretch over time. A stable faculty presence can support all of those needs while also teaching residents and fellows how psychiatric care fits into a multidisciplinary pediatric hospital.
Team-based care is central to the service model
The hospital describes a culture of shared responsibility, and the psychiatry role is embedded in that structure. Supportive leadership, collaboration within a small specialized psychiatry team, and peer contact with psychiatrists in pediatric oncology are all part of the professional setting. External mentorship is also built in, which may help a psychiatrist navigate the emotional load that accompanies repeated exposure to serious illness in children and families.
Prior experience in pediatric oncology is welcome but not required. The more important traits are comfort with interdisciplinary care, willingness to learn the medical details of oncology treatment, and an approach that values sustained therapeutic relationships. Those qualifications make sense. In pediatric cancer, psychiatric expertise is most useful when it can be translated into a language the whole team can use: sleep, appetite, irritability, procedural distress, treatment refusal, school disruption, family strain, and neurodevelopmental change.
The hospital also emphasizes that care is delivered without charge to patients and families, a feature that may reduce barriers to access in a population already carrying substantial medical and logistical burdens. For psychiatrists, that can translate into a setting where access to care is less dependent on billing dynamics and more tightly aligned with patient need.
Qualifications, setting, and practical appeal for candidates
Applicants need an MD or DO, completion of an ACGME-accredited psychiatry residency and child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship, and eligibility for Tennessee medical licensure. Fellows in their final year of training are encouraged to apply. The position is full time, permanent, and based in Memphis, with salary described as commensurate with experience and relocation assistance available.
The Memphis setting is presented as part of the job’s practical appeal: short commutes, no state income tax, a lower cost of living, and a city with music, food, green space, and biking trails. Those details may sound peripheral, but they matter for a clinician likely to work in a demanding and emotionally intense subspecialty. Long-term retention in pediatric psychiatry often depends on whether the surrounding environment supports a workable life outside the hospital.
St. Jude’s broader institutional identity also shapes the post. The hospital is the only National Cancer Institute-designated Comprehensive Cancer Center devoted solely to children, and it is internationally recognized for pediatric oncology care and research. For the psychiatrist, that means the role sits inside a highly specialized system where psychosocial medicine is not a side service; it is part of the center’s core mission.
Applications require a letter of interest and CV submitted through the hospital’s online portal. For candidates drawn to relationship-based child psychiatry in a setting where medical complexity is the rule rather than the exception, the position offers a rare combination of continuity, collaboration, teaching, and institutional support. The tradeoff is clear: the work will be emotionally demanding, and the pace will be shaped by serious illness rather than routine outpatient psychiatry. The unanswered question for any applicant is not whether the need exists, but whether they want their clinical practice to live inside it every day.