Blessings of Child Psychiatry

Child psychiatry is a hidden blessing. I've shadowed the same doctor twice, and each time, I learn a few new things. They're all relevant and all important, but in shadowing the life of a doctor, I've come to understand many things about life, many things about death, and many things about chronically ill children.

It is astounding to me how many of my pre-conceived notions about the field of psychiatry were dispelled as soon as I walked into the first consult of the day. Mentally ill children, chronically ill children, developmentally delayed children all have one thing, if not many things, in common. They're children!

The innocence of a child doesn't leave him/her as the result of a psychiatric illness, medical trauma, or otherwise. Patients still asked us why things were happening, they were scared, they were frustrated, and they were confused.

Their smiles, their laughter, and their authentic emotion made me understand one thing: Life isn't something to ever take for granted. To always wonder why things are a certain way is a very healthy, proactive attitude. Honesty is your best policy always, but especially with children. Often, they're more perceptive than we give them credit for being.

In private dialogue with the doctor, I discussed with him what he thought about my abilities in psychiatry, as he saw me in case reviews, case conferences, patient-parent interactions, and socialization with other doctors. The one thing that has caused a smile to permanently grace my face is the fact that he said that he believed every single one of my demonstrated abilities were natural. The funny thing is, though, that doesn't matter. To avoid narcism, I'll say that if something we did as a team brightened the life of a child, even for just that moment, it was all worth it.

A face to face encounter with an actively dying patient isn't ever easy, but my first encounter happened with a teenager on this psychiatry service. I realized my love for life, my zest for people, and more importantly, my longing to make medicine a career for a lifetime, Death is a difficult concept for many people, and the experience was tough, but it was the most rewarding thing I've witnessed.

Though this post is pretty jumbled, there's one thing you should know. Kids are still kids, regardless of their labels. It's all too often that they are treated as soup cans. Second, you might be reading the ramblings of a future psychiatrist. Only time will tell!

Top Five Reasons Why I'm a Nerd

As a pre-medical student, there are lots of reasons why people would think I am a nerd. And most of the time, to say I'm a nerd, is accurate. Here are just ten (and only ten!) reasons why yours truly just might be considered a nerd!

5: My Twitter feed is full of medical students and pre-medical students. Some of my closest medical related Twitter "friends" are even doctors. It's really neat to see the conversations we get into, usually about medical ethics and the requirements for medical school admissions, and to see where the conversation takes us.

4: Well, well. This is another one that just evolved within the last week, but you can find me reading my developmental psychology book when it's not assigned reading. Unfortunately, the class doesn't finish the whole textbook, but you can bet your bottom dollar that I will be keeping it until I finish and maybe beyond that. It's such a neat book that I would recommend it to any doctor or medical student to keep as a reference to understand how best to explain the complexities of childhood so that a parent (or maybe even a child!) can understand. It truly is a wonderful, wonderful book.

3: I am completely and totally interested in social media's relationship to healthcare. In other words, can we use tools like Twitter and Facebook to empower patients and to give them full access to healthcare professionals? This topic is of such interest to me that I participate in a "Healthcare in Social Media" tweet disucussion every Sunday night at 9/8c! You should join me and other interested parties to see how healthcare's presence in social media is on the rise, is effective, and is allowing a better chance to foster a positive patient-provider relationship!

2: I have always been interested in children with significant special needs. Partly due to the fact that I have something so deeply in common with these children, the other side of the coin is that I am ready and willing to help them defy the standards, just as I have by attending college and (soon to be!) medical school, and sometimes that means that the complexity of their needs is the least of my concerns when I think about all of their potential and the ways that they will be able to impact society as a whole. This is where the special education teacher in me comes back. Thus, I will specialize in developmental pediatrics as well as pediatric rehabilitation.

1: I love to watch videos like the one below. Youtube is a wonderful bank of solid knowledge (and, by the way, is celebrating its fifth birthday this week!), from which to learn the terminologies used and the basics of various exams just sets my heart ablaze with passion for the field, for the children, and for the preservation of the sanctity of life.