Psychiatric Patient Interview

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Psychintern2006

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I started out patient in my current rotation, feel the interview is very different from inpatient or ER interview- learnt over last year and a half. Lot of chronic illnes, stable patients, OCD, Anxiety. Know any good interview book/ tips ?
 
I think that by nature of the outpatient setting, the interviews are naturally different, to a degree. Also, depending on how your clinic runs intakes, the interview style will vary widely. Some clinics offer only a one hour intake slot, by which time you're expected to get all pertinent information within that time frame and to be ready to present those findings to the team of MDs at a disposition meeting. Others allow 1.5 hours for an intake, and still others break the intake up into 2 or even 3 visits.

Either way, you can basically approach the interview in a similar standard board-like fashion, but I would recommend you allow more time for exploration of stated factors that are likely contributors to psychopathology. For example, in the ER, asking a patient about their upbrining might reveal "My father used to beat me all the time when I did something wrong." Assuming you complete this with a quick screen for sexual, verbal, and other types of abuses, you may have time to write only this on the ER sheet. In the outpatient setting, however, this is ripe for further exploration, to see if and how it might be contributing to the modern day disease.

Allow more open-ended question time, and allow patients to flesh out details more thoroughly in the outpatient setting, since presumably you'll be seeing them over months or years, and there's no rush to get an intake done in 25 mins to move on to the next ER bed or consult. There's lots more I could say, but this is a start.
 
Is there a website or a book where I can find examples of psychiatric interviews?

I think this could be really informative.

Thanks a lot for any reply.
 
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