Your unicorn-phoenix psych resident here!

Been seeing a lot of people talking about, "My gods, psych is being asked to help? What are they going to do? AHHHHH NO! (lol)" and such, so thought it'd be cool to lay down some knowledge.

The facts (come along with me as we run this):

1. Background: Most psychiatry residents have to do several months of medicine. For ours, we did six months, and there are some that do more.

This included several months of Internal Medicine, one month ICU, and one month in the ED.

1. Background: In the ICU, for me at least, this included codes and high-risk patients, as well as carrying the whole list usually once every two weeks.

In the ED, I saw intubations, participated in them, as well as other situations with tenuous patients.

1. Background: At the end, many of our medicine attendings said that our class was strong in medicine and could be in IM if we wished.

Of course, we all politely declined (there was one who almost switched, but we don't mention that hehe).

2. Currently: In our 3rd year, our residency does 4 months of CL. This means that we cover all psychiatry cases with people who are experiencing delirium, anxiety, depression, agitation, etc.

A significant number of these people are in various ICUs across the hospital.

2. Currently: This means we are helping IM teams and are consulting for them. Although we handle mainly the psychiatry side of things, this also means we have to be on our game and know the drugs, how they could interact, and about all of their medical diagnoses.

2. Currently (cont): This means we still must remember renal, cardiac, pulmonary, etc diagnoses.

We also help w/a ton with ICU delirium, agitation, and have to understand all of those facets, how to mitigate them, how to treat, and how to work WITH our colleagues in IM.

3. CL: On CL (consult-liaison), we also had to remember neurology and other specialities.

Although we are there as consultants, we needed to remember A TON of other facets, and often suggested tests that helped lead to diagnosis and cure. Along with handling the psych side.

4. What does that mean in our current environment?

That we're not coming into help as complete novices. I will admit, it may not be as ideal as having an IM res who has done this for 3yrs+, but we know how to be team players/we're quick studies.

We had to be, given our hx in IM

4. Continued: We will be able to support the patients as they experience ICU delirium and other sequelae.

An unseen benefit: we will be there to help the team with their anxiety, ASD (acute stress disorder), and depression that we're already seeing.

In essence: your fellow psychiatrists are here to help you in any way you need, not only with your (our) patients, but also for the team as a whole.

You guys aren't alone, and we're going to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with you through this.

Here for questions, too