SGA, I've worked as a psych tech/orderly before for about two years, in two different hosptials, and take it from me this is a bad idea. I'll tell you why. For one, it pays like crap. I know money can be tight but they pay barely, if even, a living wage. But that's a minor point. If you've graduated from medical school, this job will make you go insane! I'm not kidding. As an undergrad I hated it. Not because I was interested in it, but you will be given the worst work, no responsibility, no oportunity to flex your grey muscle. You will be cleaning up feces, restraining people, managing the mileu i.e., having large meetings about how the adolescent girls need to start being nicer to each other, engaging in higene, shodowing MR clients who are assaultive and shouldn't be in a psychiatric facility, and worst of all taking orders from people who are much stupider than you. At the hospital I worked in, in a major eastern city, most of the orderlies were recent imigrants from Africa and Eastern Europe. Which is fine, except that they were still strugling with English, unable to discuss things with clients, and overall just served as a set of eyes to fill the hospital's shift equations # 0f clients/staff member. They didn't know anything about mental health, psychology, or psychiatry. And the American staff members are worse, they have only graduated high school, or are psychology undergrad students that don't get that they weren't hired to come play psychologist. And you would walk in with an MD? Look it can be a very rewarding experience, don't get me wrong. At the hospital I worked at in a rural setting, techs were allowed to run groups and encouraged to spend time each shift talking 1:1 with the clients. But all of the bad stuff was there too, watching them on smoke breaks, fetching meal trays, getting bitten by Hep C+ clients who would chew thier cheeks so taht their mouth was full of blood first. I can't imagine it would look good on the CV. Don't do it.
