All entries for Monday 13 January 2020

Dr Freud eat your heart out…

This week brought the return to University after the Christmas holiday and also the start of our Specialist Clinical Placement (SCP) in Psychiatry. I suppose a good place to start would be with an introduction of what the area of Psychiatry IS. Psychiatry is a branch of medicine which deals with the mind, behaviour, thoughts. Psychiatrists are qualified doctors who then specialise in treating patients with varied conditions such as depression, anxiety, phobias, bipolar disease, schizophrenia, ADHD, learning disability and others. Psychiatry is an old medical discipline which was developed throughout the 20^thCentury (i.e. by Doctor Sigmund Freud and others) and has seen some large advances in recent years as more patients are cared for in the community.

I am in third year and this placement lasts for 6 weeks in total, but we have had some exposure to Psych before. In first year our “Brain and Behaviour” module included teaching on common mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety and we were also introduced to the complexities of history taking with a mental health patient. Then in second year, we had a whole week where we were allocated on placement to a Psychiatric service – ours was Learning Disability. Towards the end of second year we also had a day of clinical skills scenarios, where trained actors come in for the day and act as a patient who we then have to take a history from, while a tutor and other students watch. We were then given feedback on what we had done well and what we could improve on. Now we are in third year we have a whole 6 weeks where we have time in community mental health, acute care, old age care and Child and Adolescent Mental Health (CAHMS). Over the course of this 6 weeks block we are expected to become more comfortable taking a history from a real Psychiatric patient and develop our diagnostic and management skills with these patients.

The block started with 2 days of introductory presentations, covering the main psychiatric conditions to give us a strong grounding to then go onto placement with. These were informative (albeit long) days. Then on Wednesday, we went to our placement just outside Coventry to meet our consultant and the rest of the team. First was a presentation of an interesting case by one of the Junior Doctors, but unfortunately due to technical issues the presentation didn’t go ahead and instead one of the consultants just spoke about a recent patient instead. Then we went to our consultant’s clinic on ADHD (Attention Deficit Hyperactivity Disorder), which was for adults who thought they might have the condition. Right there was myth Number 1 challenged – I had always thought only children had ADHD as this seems to always be what we see on TV, but now I know this is completely wrong! In fact, lots of adults are coming forward for diagnosis and treatment after struggling to manage for years. Overall, it was really interesting and we were lucky to get the opportunity as not many Psychiatrists specialise in ADHD.

So, what’s the plan for next week? Well, we are shadowing our consultant and their other job working in a Psychiatric day hospital which should be fascinating. Then, on Tuesday we have a clinical skills lab with simulated patients (i.e. actors), which we have been told are even more challenging than last year.

Eden Villiers : 13 Jan 2020 09:08 |  Tags: Jordan Mbchb Patients Student Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem