My Journey

My name is Nemo Ordonez, M.D., I am a Medical Doctor (M.D.) who completed my four years of medical school education at the University of Washington School of Medicine.  I completed internship training in Internal Medicine and worked as a PCM physician treating primary care patients for two years.  This medical background I have has helped to complement the specialty psychiatric training, education and work experience I also have in areas such as differentiating when certain symptoms mistaken as due to a psychiatric diagnosis are actually due to a medical/organic diagnosis and vice versa.  During my time working as a primary care physician, I found that the patient interactions relating to aspects of mental health were most meaningful to me and often the most impactful for my patient’s overall health as well even with the time constraints of the primary care setting.  I also felt that if I could help patients even more in psychiatry that I could remaining in primary care.  This led to my changing my medical specialty to psychiatry by completing the rigorous psychiatric training including a 4-year general psychiatry specialty residency, a 2-year child-adolescent psychiatry subspecialty fellowship and meeting the requirements to get double board certified (in general psychiatry and child-adolescent psychiatry) by the national board in those psychiatric subspecialties.  All this training has allowed me to serve the adult and child patients that I enjoy working with.

My Experience

I have been working in the mental health field for over a decade.  My experience in the medical field includes my medical school training for which i received my M.D. (Medical Doctorate), then graduating from an Internal Medicine Internship and working as a PCM physician caring for my own panel of primary care patients two years.   I received my psychiatric trainings at a four-year Psychiatric Specialty Residency, (as part of my 1st board certification in General Psychiatry), and then at a two-year Psychiatric Subspecialty Fellowship, (as part of my 2nd board certification in Child & Adolescent Psychiatry).  Along with the above I have a decade of experience work during which I have provided treatment to a large number of psychiatric patients with many different diagnoses over a wide age range within both the child and adult populations.  I have provided care to these patients in every different psychiatric treatment setting, (with respects to symptom severity and the corresponding level of care required), including the inpatient hospital, partial hospitalization and outpatient clinic settings.  I have worked in rural and urban environments in which I provided care to the underserved and patients from all socioeconomic levels.   As a former active-duty military psychiatrist I also have experience caring for active-duty service members, veterans and their families.  

My experienced background in medicine to supplement my extensive psychiatric training is far more than a patient will find in the local outpatient clinics advertising as psychiatric clinics.  Having a physician and psychiatrist with extensive psychiatric and medical background has been essential in helping me provide patients with the correct diagnosis out of the vast number of psychiatric disorders possible to patients who have had a diagnosis missed by other providers they have seen.  My background has helped me ensure that my patients receive the correct most effective treatment the first time.  My background and experience has been important in helping me make difficult diagnoses that providers with less training had incorrectly diagnosed as a hard to treat psychiatric condition but which I determined were actually related to a medical disease masquerading as a psychiatric condition, for which I helped the patients by quickly referring them to the appropriate specialist for treatment.  I am experienced working in the inpatient hospital, outpatient clinic and partial hospitalization patient settings, but my current focus is helping patients of all ages and with any psychologic condition that is appropriately treated in the outpatient clinic setting.