We’re finished. Coming into this rotation I definitely had conflicting feelings. On the one hand I recognize how important psychiatry is and I also really enjoy talking to patients and having the opportunity and privilege to walk next to patients during some of the most vulnerable moments of their lives. On the other hand, I felt like management of a lot of psychiatric illness felt like a crapshoot even with the use of evidence based strategies. You are often reliant not only on individual response to medications, but also personalities or pathology that make adherence sometimes even more difficult than it is with the less-psychiatric population.
I think through this experience I got a lot of really great opportunities to talk to emotionally and mentally fragile (often times due to them being pushed to their edge) or volatile patients, and practice skills in dealing with stressful and delicate situations. I think I learned a lot about management of psychiatry illness and everything that goes into making decisions about patient’s medications. I learned about ways we can try to regain the trust of people who have felt abandoned and/ or betrayed by our healthcare systems and by doctors.
There were a lot of valuable lessons and the are just a few. While I the field of psychiatry is probably not for me, I will definitely try to bring (and likely will have to whether I like it or not) all that I learned to wherever I end up.
nANIMOv 