Good, bad, and ugly?

[IniestaDeMiVida]

I'm just finishing up first year. I got some exposure to psych this year (among other specialities) and I really enjoyed it. But I'm worried that I'm not seeing what psychiatry would really be like, as a resident or a professional. Could some of you who are in psychiatry now give me some perspective? What is the thing that usually turns people away from the field? What brought you in? What kind of temperament or personality is best suited to the field? I'd like the spend more time pursuing it, but I get the impression the faculty I email about shadowing don't automatically suggest sending me to the county psych ward for exposure.

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[Nasrudin]

I will leave some of your questions to my seniors except, that finding good exposure is indeed difficult. Smaller outpatient settings are not welcome to causal observers typically and the locked inpatient wards are a distortion by themselves. So yes...it's very difficult to be sure about choosing psych.

I would use a process of elimination, 3rd year clerkships, and intuition for the sort of things you like to spend time thinking about and working on.

 

[IniestaDeMiVida]

I will leave some your questions to my seniors except, that finding good exposure is indeed difficult. Smaller outpatient settings are not welcome to causal observers typically and the locked inpatient wards are a distortion by themselves. So yes...it's very difficult to be sure about choosing psych.

I would use a process of elimination, 3rd year clerkships, and intuition for at sort of things you like to spend time thinking about and working on.

Agreed. My exposure was actually in a child psychiatry outpatient program, generally for those who have been abused. It was super interesting, but probably and lot less crazy and difficult than what can be expected from other areas of psych. I'll keep your advice in mind, though. I've always enjoyed psychology/behavior.

 

[Nasrudin]

Agreed. My exposure was actually in a child psychiatry outpatient program, generally for those who have been abused. It was super interesting, but probably and lot less crazy and difficult than what can be expected from other areas of psych. I'll keep your advice in mind, though. I've always enjoyed psychology/behavior.

That's actually great exposure. There are programs for medical students to develop their interests in psychiatry. I did one--VCU's summer institute for psychiatry. But there are others via the NIMH and so forth.

 

[Armadillos]

You have the chance to rotate at the VA during your psych rotation? You will definitely see some of the bad and the ugly there, but in my experience you can also get a pretty good opportunity to have a little more "autonomy" (I use this term loosely) as a medstudent in their outpatient clinics compared to some other places. VA patients are very used to working with trainees, which is nice because either they will be fine with you or they will be straightforward from the start that they have no interest in medstudents working with them.

My outpatient VA experience was one of my best experiences in medschool, I had "my office" that I sat in and brought patients back to. Would interview them, go present to the attending, attending would then come to talk with patient, I would write note in CPRS and they would make an addendum with their own mental status exam and plan. It was one of the few times in medschool where I really felt like what I was doing on a rotation was at all similar to what it would be like to actually practice in that field.

 

[IniestaDeMiVida]

You have the chance to rotate at the VA during your psych rotation? You will definitely see some of the bad and the ugly there, but in my experience you can also get a pretty good opportunity to have a little more "autonomy" (I use this term loosely) as a medstudent in their outpatient clinics compared to some other places. VA patients are very used to working with trainees, which is nice because either they will be fine with you or they will be straightforward from the start that they have no interest in medstudents working with them.

My outpatient VA experience was one of my best experiences in medschool, I had "my office" that I sat in and brought patients back to. Would interview them, go present to the attending, attending would then come to talk with patient, I would write note in CPRS and they would make an addendum with their own mental status exam and plan. It was one of the few times in medschool where I really felt like what I was doing on a rotation was at all similar to what it would be like to actually practice in that field.

Thanks, I'll check that out. I know we've got VA here, and I'm pretty sure we can do our psych rotations there.

 

[Armadillos]

Thanks, I'll check that out. I know we've got VA here, and I'm pretty sure we can do our psych rotations there.

Experiences can vary a lot, so do you homework and see if the medschool rotation there is any good