We get patients from all over Virginia.
We get patients from you know all up and
down the east coast.
And we get to work with patients of
different you know socioeconomic
statuses.
Being able to see all of this variation
kind of opens your eyes to
the you know unique challenges that
everybody has,
and how we have to kind of consider that
in every move we make when we're treating
these patients.
There are four different teams and they
are specified as
the schizophrenia team, the mood team,
the geriatric psychiatry team, and the
medical psychiatry team.
We all hang out in the same team room
just talking about
different patients and bouncing ideas
off of each other. It's
pretty enriching to have multiple people
around all with very different
backgrounds and very different
experiences and understanding
and opinions all being able to
collaborate. Staff here has been amazing.
I mean being a new intern coming into
residency it's kind of
scary knowing that you know now you're a
doctor and you have some
level of autonomy. VCU has a balance
for that to give you the autonomy that
you need to be able to make decisions,
but then you also have
the support of your staff. You're going
on a unit and sometimes
patients can be aggravated or agitated,
so it's nice to be surrounded by staff
that can be supportive because they're
familiar with these behaviors they know
how to
handle these situations. We're here to
help our patients we want to make sure
that we're being safe too.
When you go to the more acute floor you
have behavioral specialists that are
available to come in the room with you
in the event that a patient
is more violent. We have systems in place
that you have like a notification, when
you enter a patient's chart,
of violence precautions. You're never
going to be blindsided
going into a room because this is going to
flag, hey you know just be cautious.
ECT, electroconvulsive therapy, is one
of the only procedures done by
psychiatrists,
the other one being transmagnetic
stimulation, TMS.
We have the unique opportunity here at
this facility and at this program to
have our own ECT suite here,
to you know see our patients get better
in a controlled environment within the
inpatient setting, or through the
outpatient,
ensure that they have proper follow-up,
and see them get better and progress.
You get a more hands-on approach where
you work within the ECT, determining
how much power or energy a patient gets
for a specific
treatment, you know, monitoring any side
effects,
adding any medications prior to
treatment or after treatment to control
for side effects.
And it's nice to be around people who
actually care about their craft and want
to put in work to cultivating it.
We have attendings that are doing
research on the side and are always
up to date on
how the field of psychiatry is
constantly changing, and they always
take time to incorporate that and how
they teach and treat patients.
And as a resident you're seeing that
hands-on. It's a very relaxed
environment here, and as a program in
general we always look out for resident
wellness and making sure residents are
well taken care of,
and ECT is a testament to that. Treatment
itself is fairly short.
you go through your sets of treatment
and by the afternoon you're done,
and you have time to study, you have time
to get to know, hang out with your other
residents,
or you know take time for yourself. As a
resident I feel
extremely well supported here.
When they built this building they
wanted to bring in a lot of light and
hope,
just bring some uplifting positivity to
your workday.
It gets you into the right headspace.
Patients love it.
The inpatient units themselves actually
have
windows and there's a lot of light that
comes in. The patients you know have
their individual rooms,
very comfortable space. Everybody rotates
through child at VTCC,
which is doing inpatient work. You get to
work within the context of an
interdisciplinary team
of people who are all helping to help
these children.
There's a big focus on trauma-informed
care
here, the contribution that trauma might
have to their clinical picture.
I think that the program gives a
comprehensive exposure to child
psychiatry,
including outpatient exposures, inpatient
areas and consults, so it's a little bit
of a sampling from
each area. Work life balance on VTCC
rotation
is amazing. You don't have to take a call
during
your rotation here and you also get
weekends off,
which is very unique and wonderful.
It's a beautiful building - the
architecture, the windows, it's all
gorgeous so it's
so nice to do your work in a you know
aesthetically pleasing
space, and there's side rooms, multiple
side rooms,
with beautiful views, that we bring the
patients to to have private interviews,
one-on-one with the patients,
so there's a variety of different types
of rooms to fit different needs. One of
the great things about being
you know in an urban area is you know
the patient base to support
multiple subspecialty clinics. So you
know we have HIV
psychiatry clinic, we have high risk OB
psychiatry clinic,
and Motivate clinic for substance abuse,
among many others.
We expose people to psychotherapy early
on in the beginning of second year.
The way our program is, it's front-loaded,
so there's less and less call every year
to the point of third year you only have
15 calls spaced out over the
whole year.
And then fourth year no call at all, so
plenty of free time as you move
along. You get to know people that you
work with really well.
Building the bonds with your fellow
residents is going to be really
important because
you're going to be the ones covering
each other's shifts into your third and
fourth year.
You know, you've built that bond with
other people
and you have more time to kind of
explore the city. Richmond
has everything that a big city has but
it's just more compact.
We're getting a lot of breweries, there's
music venues,
there's local sports teams. Between
clinics you know we'll usually
have a lunch break which is a nice added
bonus of third year
residency. If you want it it's here in
the neighborhood, and you can just run
out and quickly grab something
between clinics, which is lovely. Right
here in Jackson Ward and downtown you're
close to really great
options of where you want to live. No
matter where you choose to live,
what your preferences are in a
neighborhood, you can get to the jackson
Center. You can get to
the main hospital in a 10-minute car
ride,
a 15-minute bike ride. It's all very very
manageable,
kind of transit-wise. It's a very
welcoming
place to be.