Quick anecdote that might be useful for residents

This forum made possible through the generous support of SDN members, donors, and sponsors. Thank you.

surftheiop

Full Member
10+ Year Member
Joined
Dec 4, 2008
Messages
1,912
Reaction score
28
I get told all these stories from extended acquaintances seeing as I'm in medschool now, but I thought it might be a useful reminder.

So a family friend in her 20s with depression/anxiety has been going downhill for a couple weeks. It culminated with some really serious suicidal ideation and then later in the day made some comments to her outpatient psychiatrist about possibly harming some people. The psychiatrist wanted to get her admitted, so the family took her to university ER, but the psych hospital was full so she had to stay in the ER holding area for like 8 hours before anyone from psych came to evaluate who was going to get beds in the psych hospital.

Apparently the resident rolls in, starts doing an evaluation and within 2 minutes is ranting to her about how studies have shown taking melatonin causes nightmares, then proceeds to talk about how studies suggest that some of her meds might be diminishing each others efficacy. The family was kind of shocked and she got really upset, apparently even the rotating medstudent thought the resident was way out of line and tried to push things back towards actually interviewing her and establishing some rapport.

So yeah I guess after a young person has been anxiously sitting in ER for 8 hours (never been in a hospital before) its probably not good to start off your encounter by tearing into the management the patient had been getting from a well respected psychiatrist while basically ignoring the suicidal person in front of you.
 
Top