This is my last post as a second year medical student (MS2). The first six months were spent completing the basic sciences, but over the last six months, I’ve finished rotations in Internal Medicine and Psychiatry while also doing ENT research in April. I wanted to write a post summarizing the many things I learned […]

The consult/liason psychiatry service at Ben Taub was pretty busy through June, but I worked well with my three incredibly awesome teammates to get the job done. The oral exam last Thursday was a friendly reminder of how short a 30 minute presentation really is – I felt like I had spoken five minutes, looked […]

So I was perusing through some charts today when I came across an interesting problem list.

Tomorrow afternoon, the last 20% of my psychiatry rotation’s grade will be determined based on my ability to watch a 30 minute videotaped patient encounter, prepare a presentation, and then orally deliver the case with an accurate differential diagnosis and treatment plan.

I took four years of Spanish in high school and consider myself to be more-than-conversational in the language, but when it comes to especially emotional topics like discussing abuse or suicidal ideations, I prefer to use a translator to ensure that I word everything appropriately.

At 4:45pm on Friday afternoon, I left the VA after four works of working in the outpatient psych clinic. I was privileged to have an extremely insightful and approachable attending who motivated me to grasp the basics of psychiatric diagnosis and treatment and empowered me to ask questions.

Part of the psychiatric mental status exam (MSE) involves commenting on a patient’s physical appearance. Does the schizophrenic patient appear disheveled? Does the depressed patient still maintain his hygiene? While these are subjective assessments, I’m able to make them with confidence and accuracy.

Sleep changes go hand in hand with common psychiatric conditions like depression and mania, but before jumping to drugs to help you catch some Z’s, psychiatrists try to understand an individual’s “sleep hygiene” – the personal habits and environment associated with sleeping.

Depression is the most common psych condition I’ve come across during my time at the Veterans Affairs hospital. It permeates all age groups and has etiologies ranging from the loss of a family member to uncertainty about the future; in spite of this tremendous variability, two things seem to always be mentioned by patients which […]

Today I had the esteemed privilege of interviewing a veteran in the psych clinic. I also had the rare experience of witnessing this prototypic American warrior — an individual trained to show no fear, experience no pain, and survive at all costs — break down and bawl uncontrollably at the thought of his son’s suicide […]