Just a tad on the offside

So, turns out I suck at Psychiarty...at least that's how I'm feeling. This was my first week of being around psych patients after a very long and very boring week of seminars last week. How many times do we need to go over the diagnostic criteria of major depressive disorder (aka 'depression')? Not helpful to say the least since I learn better by seeing real patients as opposed to listening to some guy who likes to hear himself speak.

I spend most weekday mornings on an inpatient ward at a hospital. The ward is called "Early Psychosis Intervention (EPI)" but also has some beds for neurology patients who have psychiatric conditions secondary to their disease. The EPI program is mainly young adults or teens who have a first major episode or have relapsed. It's interesting, but the patients are very difficult to engage and mostly uncooperative. I feel sorry for them, because it's not their fault. Their 'world' is different from ours in that they inherently can't tell what's real and what's not. It must be very frightening...I'd be scared sh**less.

The afternons consist of outpatient clinics (psych checkups) and in child psych with families. I have Monday and Friday afternoons off!!! Ahhhhh...the benefits of psych!

As I was saying, I suck at Psych. I had patients refuse to answer questions from me (although they'd talk to the REAL doctor), I had patients insult me and tell me I can't read. I had one patient who decided that he wanted a diagnosis of "crazy" to get on disability benefits...but his answer to my questions was "that's none of your business". I'm learning pretty fast that it's very important to establish rapport and a sense of trust with thses patients to get them to talk to you...but I'm still trying to find ways to do that. Until then, I will keep banging my head on the door.

PS Good luck to my collegues who are doing their exams for "the big 3"!!!