When I went through psych rotations, it was definitely the most eye opening learning experience I had in school. It’s a patient population you don’t see in the everyday life and let’s you gain a lot of tools for your ‘tool belt’ that I now use in everyday life such as effective communication techniques and learning different nonverbal queues.
This was so interesting! I have lived down the road from East Regional my whole life basically and have always wondered what it's like to work there, especially since I am a medical social worker. I appreciate this insight into it and how you spoke of these patients with a lot of dignity and empathy.
Thank you for sharing your journey. I begin my nursing psych rotation next month and I had some anxiety around this specialty. I was worried about how to handle the unexpected outburst or events but your video definitely help ease my mind. Thank you!
How’d it go? I just did my 4 weeks; nothing too unusual too report; just that a lady I interviewed said she was 100 years old, but upon asking her birth year she stated “1941”. 🤦🏻♂️
i ate a hotdog this morning. As I bit into it, meaty juices squirting into the back of my mouth, I thought: “I should be a psychiatrist”. Your video has strengthened my resolve
I have become addicted to watching Dr Kojo since you did your questions with him. Your whole sharing of your med school experience has also been fascinating. I have increased appreciation for what student doctors are going through.
I remember watching your video where you talked about going into your clerkship year and now, you're halfway done! Loved the vlog, the info & the transitions! Keep going!❤🔥
Andy…while you might not directly interact with psych patients in most medical sub-disciplines, you may very well deal with the families of such patients, e.g., in family med or a general practice. My own experiences during training in psych facilities, both public and private, affirms that it is hard to quite imagine such sites if you've never been there directly. My first visit as a grad student with classmates to the NYC Bellevue Hospital Psychiatric Unit included meeting the director. He told us that, the day before, a patient had succeeded in grabbing a pencil and held it at the doc's ear-threatening to smash it into his brain. That description was over 40 years ago, but remains quite vivid to this day. I never personally experienced any direct threat of such a nature by an inpatient, but one certainly maintained a certain wariness.
currently rotating in medicine within the same hospital system as bellevue and can confirm this is accurate. there simply aren't enough beds and facilities in the city to handle the amount of people with severe mental illness, and to put it simply, to live in NYC is to live among people in the midst of psychiatric breakdowns. It's just a fact of life here, and I hope to be part of the change and help make it better. Until then, these patients will continue to have needs that spill over into medical and surgical specialties, which is why it is critical for med students to be prepared to handle patients with serious psych symptoms in any healthcare setting.
That’s actually pretty much how I expected it to be, picture with a nice couch is more about visualizing psychologists, not psychiatrists, and self defense training sounds super cool too, I wonder how to protect yourself while not harming the patient I’m in high school yet, so I’m not going to learn these techniques soon, sadly Beautiful video🙌🏻
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What does it mean that you’ll never see that type of pathology again? Even if psych patients get better and head home after an inpatient stay, more often than not they have chronic and very symptomatic conditions that persist, even into other settings. These patients still may need to see an endocrinologist, a cardiologist (especially to manage psych medication side effects), and may even need a surgeon for an unrelated condition. While it’s true that the inpatient psych ward is very unique, the conditions afflicting that patient population will certainly arise elsewhere and must be addressed by all types of physicians
While it’s true you will still see patients with such psych diagnoses in different settings, unless you go into inpatient psychiatry, you most likely will not see severe acute exacerbations of psychosis or mania that need stabilization in a facility like the one I was at. Most of the interactions you will have not within psychiatry (maybe with the exception of emergency medicine) will be with patients chronically managed on mood stabilizers or antipsychotics who present for other conditions. Many of my peers who had solely outpatient psychiatric experiences did not get to experience those acute episodes which is why it was such a good learning experience for me!
It’s fairly rare to witness such events outside of a psych hospital because they won’t release them until they are stable. I just finished a 4 week psych rotation for nursing school and didn’t witness any outbursts. So he’s probably accurate in that he’ll never see someone at the peak of a psychotic, paranoid, manic episode trying to punch everyone in the face, or trying to throw themselves out a window because they know for a fact they can fly. Those events are quite fleeting even within a lock down facility, so I’d imagine it would be extremely rare to see in any other medical settings other than perhaps the ED.
@@AstroZombie1 I guess it depends on where you live. I live in an inner city setting where there are serious homelessness and mental health issues. Some of the worst crises of mental illness that you could imagine are occurring right outside my front door 24/7. The majority of my patients have some sort of underlying psychosocial problems that need to be addressed in addition to their primary medical issue as well. Three times in the past month I have been assaulted or inappropriately approached on the street by someone in the midst of a breakdown or at least seriously detached from reality. I'm glad your patients are better off and getting good psychiatric treatment, but unfortunately, the need for better mental health care is dire in many parts of the country.
If you become a hospitalist you certainly will see psych patients on a weekly to monthly basis. Psych patients often start in the hospital to be medically stabilized before going to an inpatient psych unit.
How do you feel about wearing pins on your coat? I worry that when I become a psychiatrist or something that I shouldn’t have anything like that that could be used as a weapon to myself or others :/
probably not the safest thing in the world but we also never saw patients by ourselves or anything so there were plenty of measures to prevent it from ever becoming a weapon. same thing could be said for even pens but there's always power in numbers when working at an inpatient facility
