Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Tzvi Furer. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Tzvi, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. When you’ve been a professional in an industry for long enough, you’ll experience moments when the entire field takes a U-Turn, an instance where the consensus completely flips upside down or where the “best practices” completely change. If you’ve experienced such a U-Turn over the course of your professional career, we’d love to hear about it.

Medicine, specifically psychiatry, has been rooted in a number of “best practices” that has often been the standard until circumstances dictate otherwise. These circumstances may be dependent on sociological practices, ethics, improvements in treatment modalities, or simple changes in policy.

One such moment occurred to not only medicine, but all of the world in March 2020 when the COVID-19 pandemic was announced in the United States. During this time, I was working as an inpatient adolescent psychiatrist at New York City’s Bellevue Hospital, and having treated individuals from ages 3- 17 years, I had worked in-person to provide psychiatric care to children and adolescents that were deemed as having a psychiatric emergency. I enjoyed the work tremendously of working with individuals and families, but suddenly, the world closed in around us. Concerns about safety arose during this time, and modifications were made to our inpatient unit, including precautions that included protective gear, the use of appropriate masks for filtering out of pathogens, and alternations in day-to-day interactions for the safety of our unit milieu and staff. I am proud to have been the Unit Chief of New York City’s only COVID+ inpatient adolescent psychiatrist unit during the COVID-19 pandemic from 2020- 2022.

But for different levels of care in psychiatry during this time, this was a big time of transition to where many practitioners began to make use of virtual sessions, using modalities such as Zoom and Doxy.me. I had opened up my own private psychiatry practice in New York City in 2019, and had gotten used to in-person sessions with patients both old and new. Suddenly, as the rest of the world was simultaneously experiencing, everybody adjusted to using virtual sessions with patients. For many, this was a brand new challenge, and only utilizing this modality was both an interesting and challenging transition. I was lucky to have received training specifically in telepsychiatry from my child and adolescent psychiatry fellowship at New York University Langone Health, and found myself pretty comfortable in the modality before it was even commonplace. It allowed me to become accustomed very quickly to switching my entire private practice virtually during this time, and I continued to see the overwhelming majority of my patients virtually until I moved to Florida in 2022. I even volunteered and assisted a number of my peers and mentors to effectively provide telepsychiatry care, and I coordinated with national experts in telepsychiatry to provide the most effective level of care for our child & psychiatry fellows when I served as Associate Program Director at New York University Langone Health from 2020 – 2022.

The current landscape in psychiatry is that telemedicine visits are a frequently used treatment resource, and there a number of providers that only practice utilizing online therapy and/or medication management. I am proud to be extremely well-versed in both telepsychiatry as well as in-person evaluations, and have brought this experience to my brand new concierge psychiatry practice Palm Tree Psychiatry in Jupiter, Florida. I launched this practice in January 2024, and currently service patients in-person in Jupiter, Florida, as well as virtually across both Florida and New York where I am licensed.

Tzvi, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

I have always been fascinated with the human brain, and proudly declared to my parents at four years of age that I was going to be a doctor. I made good on that promise, and completed a Bachelor of Science in Psychobiology at Binghamton University, specifically with the knowledge that I wanted to be a psychiatrist. After medical school, I completed Adult Psychiatry Residency at SUNY Downstate Medical Center/ Kings County Hospital Center in Brooklyn NY where I served as Chief Resident. I then completed a Child Psychiatry Fellowship at NYU Medical Center / Bellevue Hospital Center in Manhattan NY, where I stayed on as faculty for several years after graduation. I previously served as Unit Chief for Inpatient Adolescent Psychiatry for several years, and previously served as the Associate Program Director for NYU’s Child Psychiatry Fellowship. I have been awarded the status of Fellow through the American Psychiatric Association and Distinguished Fellow by the American Academy of Child & Adolescent Psychiatry, given for significant contributions in the field of psychiatry.

I am a child, adolescent and adult psychiatrist and owner of my concierge private practice, Palm Tree Psychiatry located in Jupiter, Florida. It has been rewarding to work with patients comprehensively and provide fully individualized and targeted support for my patients and their families. The structure of my practice has allowed me to spend more time on complex cases, and allow more time to coordination with providers and outside organizations. My patients have appreciated that I do not operate on a one size fits all approach, and I do not strictly rely on psychiatric medication, often utilizing interventions such as psychotherapy techniques, holistic and natural approaches, as well a comprehensive medical screening.

If you could go back, would you choose the same profession, specialty, etc.?

In a heartbeat. Psychiatry, specifically child and adolescent psychiatry, has always felt like what I was meant to do.

It has been my privilege and honor to work with so many patients and their families during training and in practice, and the outcomes I have seen has been rewarding. I take what I do very seriously, especially that individuals are coming to me in some of their most difficult and uncertain times. I am blessed to have had a variety of experiences, including inpatient, outpatient and community treatment, giving me a unique provider perspective that understands that challenges at each level of care.

Putting training and knowledge aside, what else do you think really matters in terms of succeeding in your field?

The practice of psychiatry requires genuine empathy for effective and lasting treatment.

I have felt this way since the very beginning of my training as a psychiatrist, and found that the most accomplished and well-versed psychiatrists really listened to their patients and attempted to take their perspective on what was occurring. This is why I have been interested in narrative medicine and attempt to elicit an individual’s own narrative on what they’re experiencing. Medicine was previously dictated as a paternalistic “do what I say” treatment relationship and research has shown that a sincere effort to validate and sympathize with symptoms lead to the best outcomes overall.

I received extensive training in learning therapeutic techniques and processes, and this is why I still take on several therapy patients to this day. Other providers are always surprised to hear of my interest in therapy, but for me, it is a welcome change to really explore some of the root intrapsychic processes that contribute to a person’s mental state.

I have also found that empathy allows for the best opportunity to connect with a patient, and I find that the most effective treatment occurs without any transference or counter-transference that is present in the therapeutic relationship.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.palmtreepsychiatry.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/palmtreepsychiatry
• Facebook: www.facebook.com/palmtreepsychiatry
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/tzvi-furer-97258b263/
• Twitter: www.twitter.com/palmtreepsych
• Yelp: https://www.yelp.com/biz/palm-tree-psychiatry-jupiter-2