Dr. Weiner is an Associate Professor of Clinical Psychiatry and Medicine at the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine, where he co-directs the four-year curriculum in Physician-Patient Communication and Interpersonal Skills. In addition to teaching at Hofstra, Dr. Weiner has a private practice in psychopharmacology and psychotherapy in Port Washington, NY, specializing in the treatment of depression and anxiety disorders in adults. He is a “doctor’s doctor” as many of his patients are physicians. In addition to treating individuals, he also provides couples therapy.
Dr. Weiner received his M.D. from New York University Medical School and his Ph.D. in Physiology and Biophysics from New York University. He did residency training in psychiatry at NYU/Bellevue and a fellowship in public psychiatry at Columbia College of Physicians and Surgeons. In addition, he pursued advanced psychotherapy training at the American Institute of Psychoanalysis.
As a psychiatrist, Dr. Weiner has founded several clinical services and educational programs and has received national and regional awards for his work as a clinician and educator of clinicians. He has treated and helped thousands of patients and their families in his career and has mentored a generation of students and physicians to become better doctors. Nothing gives him greater pleasure than to help someone have a better life.
In 2001, his Program in the Patient-Doctor Relationship at Long Island Jewish Medical Center won the first Alan Stoudemire Award from the Academy of Psychosomatic Medicine for innovation and excellence in psychiatric education. In 2002, he received a Faculty Scholar Award from the Project on Death in America, given annually to emerging national leaders in heath care who have a commitment to improving medical care near the end of life. That year, he also founded the Palliative Care Service at Long Island Jewish Medical Center. This clinical service received the Team of the Year Award in 2007 from the Hospice Care Network for the advancement of hospice care.
Dr. Weiner has previously served as the first Chief of Primary Care Psychiatry at Beth Israel Medical Center in Manhattan, the first Medical Director of Palliative Care at Long Island Jewish Medical Center and as Chief of Consultation-Liaison Psychiatry at North Shore University Hospital/Manhasset. In 2011, the Department of Psychiatry at the Zucker Hillside Hospital gave Dr. Weiner an appreciation award for, “his dedication to the education of residents and fellows and being a role model for the humanistic approach to the art and science of medicine.” Since 2016, Castle Connolly has named Dr. Weiner a “Top Doctor in the New York Metro Area.”
One of the accomplishments he is proudest of occurred in 2015 when he received a Teacher of the Year Award from the Hofstra Northwell School of Medicine for the first 100 weeks of medical school. It is an uncommon achievement for a psychiatrist to be voted by students for such an award during the “basic science” years of a medical curriculum, particularly for the teaching of interpersonal and communication skills. Training clinicians to communicate with greater compassion and expertise is a career mission of his.
Dr. Weiner is also currently writing a book for the benefit of patients, family members and physicians about lessons learned from his late wife’s battle with cancer.