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[toastedbutter]

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[Banco]

Seems like a great experience and better/more hands-on than most pre-meds get.


If you're worried you can always do some volunteering/shadowing in more general medical settings.

 

[Moko]

I am being offered a job as a 'Psychiatric Technician' and I am wondering if it is a suitable clinical exposure
• Performs or assists with the admission of new patients by gathering routine information for nursing assessment
• Orients the patient and patient's family to the facility
• Escorts the patients to off-unit appointments and activities using therapeutic interventions to ensure the safety of the patient, hospital staff, and other University patients and visitors.
• Assists with providing a therapeutic milieu for patients by encouraging patients to participate in recreational activities and group therapies.
• Assists with supportive therapy for select patients by leading activity and conversation groups.
• Functions as a member of the interdisciplinary treatment team.
• Participates in patient care team conferences by sharing observations of patient's progress toward identified goals and assists the primary Registered Nurse with the development, evaluation, and revision of patient care plans.

This seems like a great clinical experience as you will be helping some of the most vulnerable in our society. Ideally, you will be exposed to the full gamut of mental health disorders, and have longitudinal follow-up with patients so you can see them improve over time. Psychiatry is a fascinating field. The skills you learn at this job will be helpful regardless of which specialty you go into. Just my thoughts

 

[toastedbutter]

This seems like a great clinical experience as you will be helping some of the most vulnerable in our society. Ideally, you will be exposed to the full gamut of mental health disorders, and have longitudinal follow-up with patients so you can see them improve over time. Psychiatry is a fascinating field. The skills you learn at this job will be helpful regardless of which specialty you go into. Just my thoughts

Okay so I just had a final interview and found out they want me working the shock therapy ward. I don't know how I feel about that. Given, I am uneducated on this topic but that just sounds really...harsh. Shocking people? If I continue with this experience will it look bad? Isn't medicine about compassion and making people feel better?


Edit: technical name of the ward is the 'Treatment Resistant Mood Disorders Clinic', mostly shock and ketamine.

 

[Moko]

Okay so I just had a final interview and found out they want me working the shock therapy ward. I don't know how I feel about that. Given, I am uneducated on this topic but that just sounds really...harsh. Shocking people? If I continue with this experience will it look bad? Isn't medicine about compassion and making people feel better?

ECT serves as an effective treatment for severe depression and some other conditions. It can literally help patients regain control of their mind. It's really quite amazing. From what I've been told, ECT is a fairly painless procedure. It's done in a controlled environment, and it's not like they are using 200J of energy like we do with cardioversions and defibrillations. In comparison, electrical cardioversions are the truly harsh interventions (imagine being kicked in the chest by a horse), but can be the difference between life and death. No intervention is without its risks, and sometimes in order to help patients get better, we subject them to potential suffering. Think phlebotomy, chemotherapy, intubations, chest compressions, immunosuppression, anticoagulation, etc.

I would ask what the typical patient population is on this ward, i.e. will you see primarily those with severe depression, or will you also be exposed to other mood and psychotic disorders (e.g bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, etc). If it's primarily just patients with severe depression, ask if you can potentially rotate to other wards after you've gained enough experience and exposure.