All entries for Monday 27 November 2017

Community Psychiatry and the SJT

All of us Phase-III students are now in the third week of our final Specialist Clinical Placement rotation. It’s hard to believe but we’re almost at the end of this year’s formal medical instruction. We’ve all been working really hard and I hope something comes out of it. 2017 has just flown by

We’re about halfway done with our Psychiatry block, and it’s proven fascinating thus far. Of the six-week block, three weeks are meant to be spent in the community, one spent with an old-age consultant, and two on acute care. Our community placement has been in a lovely clinical practice in the community (i.e., not at a hospital) with several psychiatrists (including consultants and registrars), psychologists, and care coordinators all working together for each patient’s wellbeing. I gather that most patients won’t be seen by a psychiatrist unless they are referred by a medical professional or a police officer, depending on the circumstances. We’ve seen lots of varying presentations in the clinics, including severe depression, emotionally unstable personality disorder, paranoid schizophrenia and many other things. And we’ve seen patients at various stages of treatment as well, including new-onset, follow-ups after initial therapy, and some patients who’ve been under treatment for decades and have come in for medication reviews. It’s fascinating to see all of these presentations at once, after having read about them for so long.

Most patients have been really open with me and my clinical partner when we ask them questions about their conditions, including symptoms, duration and treatment of their condition – and it’s great when they are able to help us learn. Elements of the psychiatric history can be quite personal, as they involve intimate details about a patient’s upbringing and social life, and so sometimes it takes some effort to get comfortable posing them, but when you realise that you need to handle an intimate psychiatric exam the same way you’d handle an intimate physical exam – with sensitivity and professionalism at all times, focusing on the patient’s wellbeing – it becomes easier with practice.

Over the next few weeks, we have old-age and acute psychiatric placements. I’m really looking forward to them, especially the acute part. About a year and a half ago, we had an introductory week on a psychiatric intensive-care ward and it was absolutely brilliant. Now that we have gained a lot more medical knowledge, and in particular have spent the past few weeks bolstering our knowledge of psychiatric conditions and how to treat them, I hope it will be that much better and more useful.

Very shortly, members of our cohort will also be sitting the SJT, or the Situational Judgement Test. This is a test that all final-year medical students are required to take before entering the foundation programme, which is hopefully at the end of summer 2018 after graduation. The SJT is designed to assess students’ ethical judgement through asking us to respond to various realistic scenarios. One common scenario presents us with a fictional but realistic hospital situation and asks us to rank, in order of appropriateness, the options on how to proceed. Although you cannot officially revise for this exam, its administrators issue official practice tests, and there is no shortage of revision courses and materials to help us get through. WMS have even included sample SJT questions at the end of our CBL cases as well, which has been very helpful. I’m looking forward to seeing what the exam contains, but more importantly, I’m looking forward to it being behind me!

Joshua Galvin : 27 Nov 2017 16:49 |  Tags: John Mbchb Medicine Warwick Wms |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem