December 31st,2008
For many years I conducted 2-4 new patient psychiatric evaluations a day. Despite having done hundreds of these evals, I still was left with a little bit of trepidation every time I saw a new patient. I always had the sense that this process was somewhat unpredictable, unpleasant, and stressful.
My attitude changed – I became much more confident – when I made the following change in how I formatted my initial patient evaluations. It’s a simple change, but it took me years to make. Why? No one ever taught me any better in residency. Read on to see if this change will work for you too.
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December 19th,2008
More often than we think, our patients choose not to share crucial and / or emotionally-laden information with us. Continuing to ask direct questions that hit squarely at the heart of the sensitive topic often leads to continued withholding by the patient. It may actually make matters worse – the patient’s initial denials of having a problem solidifies into a permanent denial. After all, once a person has denied having a problem it’s that much more “embarrassing” to them to then admit that not only does the problem exist but also that they kept it from you. Consider how a sensitivity to a patient’s non-verbal behavior led this doctor to get a patient to the point of openning up on a topic.
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December 12th,2008
A few days ago we completed another rocking and rolling Psychiatry Part 2 Beat The Boards! Course (at least, that was my experience of the hard-working, enthusiastic participants). On one afternoon of the course, when I was examining candidates on the live patient interview section of the exam, it happened that two candidates back-to-back had interviews of similar quality. But the first doctor ended 30 seconds early while the second kept going until told to stop. The first doctor would have failed his exam; the second would have passed hers. Here’s why.
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