Welcome 2008
Welcome First Years – 2008
Monday, 10 March 2008
Well, you've survived February! How was your first month? Are you still in shock?
Don't worry we''re here to help -who are we? We are all the other registrars.
The easiest way for us to meet and greet, given that we stretched from Western Australia to Dunedin, is through anzapt.org and its messenger “The Responder”, a monthly e-newsletter.
If you're not signed up yet click here and register and make sure you coerce your mates do the same thing.
So, here are a few starting tips:
Have a look at Saxby Pridmore's “Download off Psychiatry”. This is hosted out off the University of Tasmania e-prints with the standard aimed at medical students, but when you start, information overload is a common experience, this gives a nice birds eye view of topics that is enough to get you going. This article explains it further and you can access the e- print directly or an HTML version on our site. This has been very popular with registrars.
The next interesting place is the Video Journal of Psychiatry which is reviewed in another article in this edition.
If you're talking to supervisors or medical administrators they'll probably do the kind of “Ra-Ra”stuff such as “Psychiatry is a tremendously rewarding field but sometimes it can be a challenge”They're kind of right, but if you talk to a gnarled old hack like me I 'd be a bit more blunt andsay it's tough as hell.
Take care of yourself from day one because it will be an assault on all your senses at one time or another and potentially traumatizing if you're not adequately supported. A bit grim? Maybe. But the best bet is to go in with your eyes open, the sense of self protection adequately mobilized and good supports being built from day one. Extra special care needs to be taken if you have children during training because the vulnerability increases 10 fold for a complexity of reasons which will be discussed in a later edition.
You can divide you thinking into three general domains: work, training and assessment. Individually these are all doable, in combination they can be overwhelming.
There is a great mentor article by psychiatrist David Leonard entitled “Maintaining Interest”. This is a great read because it models questioning how the establishment functions so that you don't succumb to a sense of powerlessness and failure if you can't fulfill all its demands.. For that matter all the mentor articles have been highly read, with very positive registrar feedback and can be found in the “Life” section.
Problems and queries are best dealt with in the forum which has “sealed sections” for registrar eyes only. There is also case history resources in this section which assist the registrar get their heads around what they're required to do. You have to register for this section separately in order to be able to post and access the “sealed section”. There are unsealed bits as well for non-registrars and the general public.
The first year section is somewhat undeveloped and we would love to hear your news and views or comments on a favourite book be it psychiatry or other? You can submit them directly to me via the link at the top of any web page under the ANZAPT butterfly on the right-hand side, or you can join the forum, starting you topic or add to an existing topic if you don't want to be so formal.
Finally welcome, great to have you on board, joined in with the web site assoon as possible and we look forward to hearing from you!