TSR Med Students' Society Part V

I must confess that I didn't always carry mine. And I was on the psychiatric intensive care unit.

Spending an hour on my own in a locked room with a chap with treatment resistant schizophrenia isn't in the least bit uncomfortable, but outpatient appointments with BPD/APD patients were really, really unsettling.

I found psych intense in the sense that you can have a lot to do (if you want) and it's obviously quite unsettling if people are in a bad way. I suppose you get used to it, but the wards where I was were more or less top security doors everywhere. It felt kind of like being in prison, I was pretty freaked out by the set-up initially. Especially because we weren't given any keys or swipes so had to stand out with the patients to be let into and out of rooms!! Anyway I'm sure it'll differ depending on where you are - good luck with it :P

I got told a really good acronym for the MSE if you don't already have one. ABS-MAT-PCI-Risk - working your abs on a mat you may have a heart attack and are a PCI risk! Appearance, behaviour, speech, mood, affect, thoughts, perceptions, cognition, insight, risk. It stuck in my brain really well anyway, good to have a format so you can work through the MSE logically each time.

If you are given access cards for the unit, check your corners when entering and exiting. Never let somebody you don't recognise without an ID card through and make sure that doors shut behind you.

Let's scare the poor third years.

In the acute unit you also get a panic alarm.


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I found psych intense in the sense that you can have a lot to do (if you want) and it's obviously quite unsettling if people are in a bad way. I suppose you get used to it, but the wards where I was were more or less top security doors everywhere. It felt kind of like being in prison, I was pretty freaked out by the set-up initially. Especially because we weren't given any keys or swipes so had to stand out with the patients to be let into and out of rooms!! Anyway I'm sure it'll differ depending on where you are - good luck with it :P

I got told a really good acronym for the MSE if you don't already have one. ABS-MAT-PCI-Risk - working your abs on a mat you may have a heart attack and are a PCI risk! Appearance, behaviour, speech, mood, affect, thoughts, perceptions, cognition, insight, risk. It stuck in my brain really well anyway, good to have a format so you can work through the MSE logically each time.

Reading this thread is getting me hyped for my clinical placements in Year 3. Just got to pass Year 2 first.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28678420

Has anybody else seen this? Bad times, man.

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-28678420

Has anybody else seen this? Bad times, man.

Got my third year placements through and I am starting with 6 weeks on Psych. Any tips?

I found psych intense in the sense that you can have a lot to do (if you want) and it's obviously quite unsettling if people are in a bad way. I suppose you get used to it, but the wards where I was were more or less top security doors everywhere. It felt kind of like being in prison, I was pretty freaked out by the set-up initially. Especially because we weren't given any keys or swipes so had to stand out with the patients to be let into and out of rooms!! Anyway I'm sure it'll differ depending on where you are - good luck with it :P

I got told a really good acronym for the MSE if you don't already have one. ABS-MAT-PCI-Risk - working your abs on a mat you may have a heart attack and are a PCI risk! Appearance, behaviour, speech, mood, affect, thoughts, perceptions, cognition, insight, risk. It stuck in my brain really well anyway, good to have a format so you can work through the MSE logically each time.

Me too! Just got to do my resit next week and hope I pass it to become a third year!

I really enjoyed Psych - It was my second rotation in 4th year. Obviously it was new to me at the time and it does take a while to get used to it, but I had a really keen consultant who trained in North Africa originally. He wasn't the typical chillaxed Psych consultant you would imagine; he was very intense and would quiz you until you had nothing more to give. That said, he was absolutely fine with his patients but he would keep us back at the end of the twice weekly ward rounds and ask us to present our histories to the team of doctors and then would grill us on the intricacies of definitions, psychopharmacology, etc. It felt more like a surgical firm than a psych firm, but I compare my experiences to others and I really, really learnt A LOT from him by the end of the placement. In retrospect, I think the reason I enjoyed Psych was because he made sure you knew your stuff inside out before the firm ended so I never really felt like I was just there doing nothing.

Psych is one of the few specialities where you really have to rely on your communication skills to get through it properly. Psych histories take forever to do properly too so perhaps that's why people like to do the bare minimum. There is a fair bit of waiting around so you may find yourself dilly-dallying a bit, but just be as smart with your ward time as you would be on any other rotation, and you will be fine. Loads of people dossed off on their attachments, but my clinical partner and I rarely got days off, partly because we had this intense consultant. At the time, it was annoying because we would get in at 8:30 some days and leave at 6pm ON PSYCH (), but at the end of the year, I was grateful I spent all those extra hours taking that extra history for depression, or that psychosis history or that history from a manic patient, presenting each with a MSE at the end (something that actually needs some practising), followed by an onslaught of questions from the team. Great firm! Our end of year exams were pretty Pscyh (as well as Paeds and O&G) heavy in the written and the OSCE examinations. Maybe ask the older students how big Psych is in this year?

I found psych pretty dull, personally. Met some interesting people and had a few nice chats but it wasn't intellectually stimulating at all. Felt as though inpatient psych was more social work with a sprinkling of trial and error medicating. I still don't really understand how the juniors spent their time. I was really happy to get back to medicine and surgery in the end.

I know you guys can't stand it when people post in here before they've actually started their course but since I've been knocking about here so long I figured you might cut me some slack just this once... I got into Copenhagen and will be starting at the end of January. I've known this for a good five hours now and still couldn't dream of sleeping. I did not expect this in the slightest.

Congrats Ronove! Remember you posting from when I applied. Great news!

As mentioned above, a proper history and MSE can take well over an hour and is more opportunistic than a normal medical history.

Good luck!