Week 5:
Further Exploring the Field of Psychiatry

July 20, 2017

This week, I had a change of pace and was able to shadow Dr. Vande Voort in the adolescent psychiatry unit. I went into this a bit nervous because I was uncertain of what to expect. The patient care team started by meeting for morning report and speaking about each of the patients. We then rounded on the patients, ages ranging from 14-17 years old. Many of the patients were admitted for suicidal ideations, suicide attempts, depressive and violent episodes. The patients admitted for violent episodes presented an aggression risk. In this unit, there were many new scenarios and things to keep in mind that I hadn’t previously thought of. Another added factor was the involvement of family members in patient care. Being adolescents, the patients are not “in-charge” of their own care, and therefore the parents are readily involved. This poses an issue, because many of the patients are not in good relations with their parents, or have negative ideals about them. You also have to take into account how willing and able the parents/families are to adapt to new habits and change their ways to provide a healing and appropriate environment for their child. This is an idea that I often struggle with when thinking about pediatrics. Not only do you have to think about the patient, but you also have to take into account their home life and their parents’ situations.

After shadowing in adolescent psychiatry, I am in a sort of limbo. It was an incredibly interesting experience, but I also found myself getting very caught up in my emotions. I left the unit feeling very sad for the patients, and I fear that if this was my daily work, I would take my work home with me. I plan on shadowing in this unit once more before I leave, and will go about the experience keeping this in mind. Overall, I feel very thankful for this opportunity and all of my shadowing opportunities thus far. I am learning more and more each time about what I love, and where my limitations lie.

We went to the weekly neurology case conference, where a neurology resident presents a case they believe to be important, and most of the time is quite rare. This is something that is very amazing about the Mayo Clinic, and medicine in general. Education is a major factor and one of medicines most appealing aspects for me. One of my favorite things about the field of medicine is that it is constantly changing, and hat learning is imperative for success.

This week, we also went to a lecture for summer students on the cancer genomic project and the work that a doctor at Mayo is doing involving liver cancer. He summarized his work, which works to sequence cancer exomes and DNA from the liver. His work has very serious implications, as liver cancer can now be categorized into three classes, determined based upon the genetic mutations involved, and therefore, it is possible that they can be treated in different ways. I was able to follow and understand this presentation in depth due to my having taken genetics this year. It was very cool to see concepts we learned about being applied to real-world, revolutionary research.

This weekend, I am off the Los Angeles to visit Kenna and take a bit of a break from my research, but next week I will be tirelessly working on the 4-limb pilot project that I will be working on for the rest of the summer.