Psych Rotation

Started by BDylan
Get help with your application

Use all the free resources available to you from SDN: articles, guides, expert advising, forums discussions, and school research.

Browse articles Compare schools My application plan Read Interview Feedback
Practice for interviews Ask an Advisor
BDylan said:
Psych is my first rotation and, being completely green, I was curious as to what I can expect (or rather, what will be expected of me). In an effort to answer that question, I found this old gem: http://www.studentdoctor.net/guide/medstudent/clinical_science/psychiatry/overview.html

Is that still about accurate?
Click to expand...

yeah seems about right. I started off on pysch and it was a nice easy entry into the clinical years. tho could have been a little too easy. my next rotation was surgery and quickly found out how little of medicine i learned on psych. i also noticed that a lot of my classmates that took psych in the later part of the year were a little more irritated by it since it seemed like it went from going to lots of responsibility to just mearly listening to people go on about their problems. so take this time to relax..get any household project that need to be done done..and enjoy
 
I agree that all of that seems pretty accurate. I had Psych right before Christmas break, which was an excellent time to take it. I actually had time to do some of the things that I wanted to do. All of our third year rotations are 8 weeks, and since I did OB/Gyn first, followed by Surgery, I was ready for the break! 😀

I think that one big advantage of taking Psych early is that you really learn how to interact and deal with difficult patients. My Medicine attending was really impressed with how I was able to relate to a borderline patient on the wards. I don't think that I would have done so well with this particular patient if it hadn't been for my doing Psych before Medicine.

The only other thing that I would suggest is that you borrow or buy a Pocket DSM-IV and become very familiar with the diagnostic criteria for bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, borderline personality, etc. Our attendings really liked to pimp us on that kind of stuff and it does help for the Shelf exam!
 
on one of the first results form yahoo search, there's a site called behavenet or something like that that has dsm-iv info online. if you're too cheap to carry aroudn the pocketbok everyone in psych carries around (at a heafty $30+), then just print it out for common stuff like schizo, bipolar, depression, antisocial, etc. or cut/paste and print like 4 sheets on sheet of paper.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.