Psychiatry Rotation: Recommended Books

[Guest Ian Wong]

Here's just some recommendations for both textbooks and ward books based on my experiences in this rotation. I don't claim to know what's best, but this is what I used for this rotation.

 

Recommended books for Psychiatry:

 

You don't get a white coat for Psych, so your pocket space goes down dramatically. Luckily enough, you don't need to carry lots of books for your Psych rotation; there's a really good one that pretty much does it all.

 

1) Tarascon Pharmacopeia

2) Current Clinical Strategies Psychiatry ISBN: 1-929622-02-3

 

At home so you can read up in your spare time (which you'll have lots of...)

 

3) Nothing required.

 

Tarascon is the only mini-book that you'll need for this rotation, just so that you have a good handle on the meds dosages for both the psychiatric and non-psychiatric meds that your patients may be using. Maxwell's and Sanfords aren't really that helpful.

 

The Current Clinical Strategies Psychiatry book is absolutely amazing. Make sure you have it with you each day; figure out some way of carrying it around with you, either in a shirt pocket, in a shoulder bag, or something. This book gives you all the information you need to pigeon-hole your patients into a certain disease category (ie. Generalized Anxiety Disorder vs Major Depressive Episode vs Dysthymic Disorder), and initiate a first-line treatment.

 

I don't think you'll need any further textbooks unless you want to get into the theoretical or theologic areas of psychiatry. I had both Blueprints Psychiatry and Kaplan and Saddock's Synopsis of Psychiatry, and never opened either or them. For the nuts and bolts of your daily clinical activities, CCS Psychiatry will do great.

 

The major goal you should get out of Psychiatry is getting more comfortable asking the personal questions with your patients. Talking frankly about suicide, sexual history, and other intimate details was difficult at first for everyone, but you get better at it with practice. You should also be practising your assessments of patients using their non-verbal cues like eye contact (or lack of it), any unusual mannerisms like fidgeting, involuntary movements or vocalization, level of personal hygiene and grooming, etc.

 

You should also know about all the large categories of psychiatry diseases (eg. Anxiety disorders vs Mood disorders vs Personality disorders vs Psychotic disorders), and have a good sense of the diagnostic criteria for common things like depression, and know the first-line treatments for each.

 

Finally, something that psychiatrists know a lot about, is sedation and medication for unruly and uncooperative patients. You should get a good sense of the different medications and dosages, and also when to go to each ascending level of medications in order to control a patient. This knowledge will serve you well in the future.

 

Ian

UBC, Med 4

[Guest Ian Wong]

Floating back to the top...

 

Ian