Hellooooo amazeballs 🙂
It’s day 148. I can’t believe we’ve already passed half of the fifth year. I just finished my Psychiatric rotation. It was beyond my expectation ( uhm, I mean the experience of course). So, my group started our first two weeks in the clinics near Princess Rahma hospital. We stayed in the clinics and listen to the doctor interviewing the patient. Taking some notes and trying to grasp some idea about Psychiatry.
Days in KAUH for me is better. Because we take history on our own first. Of course, you’ll need your local colleague’s help for history taking. Taking psychiatric history in Arabic is possible, but reaaaaally reaaaaally difficult. First, you have to know what each terms mean – yeah, I need to remind you the memory of studying for ethics. New vocabs and stuff. The term in English is already difficult and now you have to know it in arabic. But it was fun. My group mates were very helpful and they did gave us the chance to practice history taking in Arabic with the patient. You will still need some help, because your patient will be telling you story and you need to understand it. It’s not just “I have a low back pain, continuous, non-radiating” stuff.. This is “I can see angels” or “I think my husband is cheating on me” kinda stuff. So, you can never expect what the patient will tell you, so some new word will come out and you WILL need a translator.
The remaining two weeks were spent in Fuheis. Here, some patient can speak English – now we can take history on our own 🙂
Ok, now for the don’ts.
- If you’re in Amman, don’t go to acute ward. Acute patients are still in an episode – you won’t benefit from them. Most of them tells you “I was doing nothing, suddenly they bring me here”. It’s good to practice Mental State Examination, though. Go to chronic ward where patients are a lot calmer, have insight and can give you better history ( for the purpose of writing your case report).
- Don’t wait until the end of the rotation to take  a look at how the case report was supposed to be written.
- For the mini-osce, they tell you what were required for the examis first four chapters + pharmacotherapy & psychotherapy. They really mean it, and stick to it. Make sure you know the first 4 chapter very well. Psychosis, Mood disorder, anxiety disorder. Don’t go spend so much time on things like personality disorder. I did the mistake of not focusing on the forementioned chapters. 😦
- Don’t waste your one and a half hour ride to amman. practice the history taking. that would be a major help. (I didn’t do this..too bad). I guess that would have been the key to being a lot calmer for OSCE.
- Don’t put in your seminar slide show things you don’t know just because it’s in the first-aid or the previous year slide. Dr. Ali stresses on DMS-IV a lot in seminars. If it’s not in DSM-IV, keep it to yourself.
- If the doctor question your fact in the seminar, (and you copied it from First Aid), most of the time you really ARE wrong. Just accept the fact and no need to be defensive. You can find the DSM-IV criteria in NMS book.
- Don’t worry too much about asking ALL questions in the osce. The evaluation scheme is slightly different than other rotation – they want to see you build good rapport with patient and being able to show empathy to patient. DONT forget to ask “how does this affect your life”.
I guess that’s it… I kinda enjoy Psychiatry.. Patients are very welcoming, funny. and yeah, I got kissed by an Indian woman (patient). LOL.
till next time, stay fabulous 🙂
Fabulous Curves 