New experiences

Towards the end of my third year, I had two rotations left to complete. The first was psychiatry. Similarly to Obs and Gynae, psychiatry was a completely new speciality for me. I had of course come across some aspects of psychiatry during my GP rotation  for example anxiety and post-natal depression, however overall it was very new. Unfortunately we still live in a society where there is some stigma attached to psychiatry and mental health. Although this situation is improving, I think it is fair to say that some stigma and prejudice does still exist. This rotation enabled me to see psychiatry from the other side (i.e. from inside the wards, rather than from the outside looking in) and I was really looking forward to seeing what it was all about. My first day on this rotation involved observing a review of a patient who had schizophrenia. The patient we saw had several symptoms that I could not recognise at the time, however after attending lectures I realise now that the patient we saw actually exhibited symptoms such as auditory and visual hallucinations and ideas of reference. ‘Ideas of reference’ basically means that the patient believes that an event or coincidence that they experience or notice actually has a specific reference to them and has a special meaning. I found a lot of the new concepts in psychiatry, such as ideas of reference, difficult to get my head around at first, as they seem quite abstract and hard to imagine. This is one of the reasons why I enjoy studying at Lancaster so much as it allows me to apply my theoretical learning to real-life patients, making the learning a lot more memorable.

The rest of psychiatry rotation involved spending time on the wards taking histories from patients and attending clinics, such as the Substance Abuse clinic and the Memory clinic. I found the Memory clinic particularly  enjoyable as I found the tests and screening tool used in elderly psychiatry, for example to aid making a diagnosis of dementia, really interesting. The psychiatrists use tools that test the patients’ short term memory recall, knowledge of current news, ability to name objects and ability to draw to help make diagnoses. I even got the opportunity to take one of these tests myself and the outcome wasn’t as I expected! (Should I be worried?!). Overall I thoroughly enjoyed my psychiatry placement, especially the weekly teaching we received from Nick (Mullin) – he is fantastic and made every topic so interesting and engaging. I enjoyed psychiatry so much that I would now consider it to be on my short list of potential specialties I may want to seriously look into in the future!