Psychiatry

      Yesterday marks the 2nd week of my posting in the psychiatry department, PPUKM. This is my first posting of my 4th year.

       Yet, until today, psychiatry seems to be so abstract to me. Moving on to the 8th day tomorrow, I have still yet to tune myself into the minds of psychiatrists. Everything just seems to be so vague. Frankly, I have been trying to like and enjoy this posting but things did not turn out to be better. However, on a positive note, at least I have a direction and heading towards the goal set.

     Clerking in psychiatry has been the most interesting part as far as I'm concerned. Unlike Internal Medicine or Surgery, the method of clerkship is quite different. I have clerked a few cases till date and most of them had been major depression or with suicidal attempts. Initially, I felt scared to even approach a psychiatry patient for the fear of the unstable mood they possess. To me, they appear to be violent, creepy and unfriendly.


     I managed to clerk an interesting patient today. She was diagnosed with schizophrenia since 2006 and has been on medication since then. It still deters me to clerk a schizophrenic patient although I have been trained to clerk one. It turned out to be quite a new experience when I clerked her, with my 2 other friends accompanying me. I could not really get the history as she always wanted to go to the toilet. The reason? She has 4 bottles of mineral water bottles (1.5L) on her table and kept drinking them. She said that she must drink lots of water to keep her facial texture smooth and nice. On top of that, she kept saying that I must eat more as I appear so thin her. It happened thrice throughout the interview.


     Will be attending a clinic session tomorrow with my supervisor. Finally ! I have longed to meet her since the first day. Hopefully she will be able to enlighten me and make me enjoy the 8 weeks in this posting =)



yikping
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