My psychiatry rotation at Queens’ Hospital Center’s Comprehensive Psychiatric Emergency Program (CPEP) will truly be one of my favorite experiences to date. The environment that I stayed in opened my eyes to see how important mental health is and knowing about psychiatry field as a future PA. There were various scenarios where taking a psychiatric history and trying to understand where these patients were coming from with their emotions were a very challenging part of this rotation. It was also very important to pay attention to the types of medications (antipsychotics, anxiolytics, antidepressants) that patients were on prior to arrival as it can give clues to their medical history.

My responsibilities during this rotation included interviewing psychiatric patients that came through triage, following up with patients already admitted into CPEP and consultations in the emergency room to check if patients needed to be admitted into the unit. It would get challenging at times to get a psychiatric history from some patients as they were either experiencing a manic episode or they were nonverbal, but many would be able to provide me with potential answers to my questions if I remained calm and kind.  One specific thing that I must work on in the future is going through mental status exams on patients as we presented it to Dr. St Martin. The most challenging part of these MSE’s would be the “reasoning and control” section as you have to address impulse control, judgement and insight. This is something I still struggle with fully understanding and will continue to work on as a future PA.

There were various different types of patients that came through the CPEP doors ranging from substance abuse, intellectually disabled, prisoners, suicidal or manic, which was very different from other rotations that I have had and took some time to adjust. It was challenging at first as a student to ask the right type of questions for each of the different scenarios and is something that I will work on as read through the DMS-5 in the future. I want to make sure that I push myself to learn and absorb as much as possible as a student as clinicals are crucial time for students to learn real world medicine and become competent healthcare providers.