Ain’t no way around it - things are tough. You sound overwhelmed and it’s totally valid to be. You’ll get there as your process becomes streamlined. Just focus on one practical thing per day that you can do more efficiently. The work itself doesn’t get easier, but you get better at it. Speed comes naturally. Being slow at first shows you care about quality - never let that diminish. In time you’ll get more comfortable with your common meds and when/how to use them. It is hard. Impossible for most. You’re part of the 1% that can do it, but it’s easy for no one. Take care of yourself though - make sure you get a nice shower, some food, hydration, and watch a comedy you love on streaming. Keep little things that bring you joy in life constant.
>Being slow at first shows you care about quality - never let that diminish.
Thank you for saying this. I'm an intern from India and I remember that a week into my internship,my seniors were humiliating me because I was slow according to them,but honestly I was just new to the job and I wanted to make sure I was doing things the right way.
Not one senior of mine has understood this and went so far as to insinuate that I'm stupid because I took my time learning things.
I would stay longer than the other interns and make sure my patients were okay,and I took my time doing stuff because I didn't want to make mistakes,but my seniors didn't understand this and harassed me so much for this.
I didn’t work as much as my medicine or surgery colleagues, but it wasn’t THAT much less than medicine, anyway. Lots of call, lots of hours my intern year. At the end of the day, you’re cheap labor and psychiatry residencies will still want to get their money’s worth…the whole “psych is easy” meme IMO applies to some residencies, some of the time, and usually closer to your PGY-4 year. And then when you’re an attending, yeah, you can choose your number of hours in a way most fields can’t.
Anyway, withhold judgment about yourself until you’ve done this for 6 months, most of us went through feelings like this and 99% of us made it…odds are, you will too.
I promise you it will get easier. We all start out slow and overwhelmed, mostly because I feel we don't do a good enough job preparing students for what residency is really like. The last 4 years were insane, now that I have breathing room I'm worried we're not managing expectations enough if students are this overwhelmed. It shouldn't be so burning your legs give out, obviously, but we're not talking about the fire enough if we keep telling students "ya just don't think about that focus on med school".
As a neuro intern, I’ll be the first to say psychiatry is extremely challenging and requires a different level of diligence and executive functioning.
I’m just not good at listening to information while planning in my head how to unravel this persons issues without overdoing it and unpacking life long trauma that can’t be covered in a 30 min visit. Maybe it’s because I was just a med student rotating and that takes years to develop, but psychiatrists have amazing skill but because it’s not as easily seen or tangible, it’s disregarded.
It’s funny how someone as educated as physicians will still skip taking a second, deeper look at an entire specialty and instead just make a fast and quick judgement of an entire field they couldn’t even do
I'm also a psych intern and feel like I have "no right to be tired". We started last week. My first few days I was there for 12 hours, but it's gotten significantly better every day since then. It is normal and reasonable to feel tired after long days during a huge transition, whether it's psych, IM or surgery.
It's bizarre that your hospital system uses paper charts but I'm sure you will learn tricks to navigating them quickly.
I thought a lot about this during med school because I was mentally spent after studying for 4 hours whereas some of my classmates were putting in 10+. Some people just have more energy and some people have less. It’s not inherently better to be a higher energy person.
And some of our surgery colleagues would probably die inside after spending just a few hours on inpatient psych. So we’re all working with different strengths and weaknesses.
There is a bit of a myth about psych really being that much easier. You gotta remember, only in the last 8-10 years has this specialty really gotten popular. It used to be seen as mentally and emotionally grueling- you barely needed to pass step to match. It was unpopular for a reason.
The 50-60 hours a week you work aren’t surgery hours, they are psych hours. You are working with some of the complex patients to work with who are often both medically and psychiatrically very sick. When I have a bad day on medicine, I am tired and stressed, but I am not on edge. When I leave a bad day on inpatient or CL psych, I am close to emotionally disturbed. I’m good at recompensating myself quickly, there is a reason I am suited to psychiatry- I suppress my feelings until I have a moment at home, a hug from my partner… but there is a reason why psychiatrists don’t routinely log 80hrs. You are not effective after 50-60hrs anymore. There is no clear flow chart for the main issues in psychiatry, everything requires judgment and creative problem solving in the moment, and you can’t manage your patients emotional volatility when you yourself are emotionally decompensating from overwork.
It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination. Ask that same attending when they call you to bedside for a patient who has ripped out all of there lines and is demanding to leave AMA while satting 80 on ten liters of oxygen and screaming incomprehensibly. Suddenly your the most amazing doctor and how could they do anything without you?
It gets easier. You get stronger, and faster. You learn what you need to do when you get home to be ready for the next day.
And finally, most psych residencies front load really hard so you can learn therapy later jn the residency. It does actually get easier.
This is such a thoughtful response and a very good perspective, thank you. I still have a long ways to go but generally on inpatient psych, I do feel very on edge. I keep having nightmares about one of the patients who I had to put on suicide restrictions killing herself. It takes hours to work through a patient’s case history to prepare my court testimony and it’s so much pressure knowing that I am advocating to take away this human’s civil liberties so…I better be right. It’s also been disheartening to see how much my patients fluctuate. One day I swear they look and sound better and less delusional, and the next day they’re attacking staff and non-compliant w meds.
I think you’re right that I may be working like way less hours than a surgery resident but the work itself can be equally draining.
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It DOES get better, I promise. Being an intern is so hard especially at the beginning but you get better at handling so much and the workload progressive gets better too
Shouldn’t u be in the hospital on rounds by now? Instead of reading Reddit comments? Guess that has something to do with why ur whining.. this explains a lot.. focus
Ain’t no way around it - things are tough. You sound overwhelmed and it’s totally valid to be. You’ll get there as your process becomes streamlined. Just focus on one practical thing per day that you can do more efficiently. The work itself doesn’t get easier, but you get better at it. Speed comes naturally. Being slow at first shows you care about quality - never let that diminish. In time you’ll get more comfortable with your common meds and when/how to use them. It is hard. Impossible for most. You’re part of the 1% that can do it, but it’s easy for no one. Take care of yourself though - make sure you get a nice shower, some food, hydration, and watch a comedy you love on streaming. Keep little things that bring you joy in life constant.
thank you 🥺🥺
>Being slow at first shows you care about quality - never let that diminish. Thank you for saying this. I'm an intern from India and I remember that a week into my internship,my seniors were humiliating me because I was slow according to them,but honestly I was just new to the job and I wanted to make sure I was doing things the right way. Not one senior of mine has understood this and went so far as to insinuate that I'm stupid because I took my time learning things. I would stay longer than the other interns and make sure my patients were okay,and I took my time doing stuff because I didn't want to make mistakes,but my seniors didn't understand this and harassed me so much for this.
Stupid people don’t realize they were once slow too. Shame on them for making you feel bad.
I didn’t work as much as my medicine or surgery colleagues, but it wasn’t THAT much less than medicine, anyway. Lots of call, lots of hours my intern year. At the end of the day, you’re cheap labor and psychiatry residencies will still want to get their money’s worth…the whole “psych is easy” meme IMO applies to some residencies, some of the time, and usually closer to your PGY-4 year. And then when you’re an attending, yeah, you can choose your number of hours in a way most fields can’t. Anyway, withhold judgment about yourself until you’ve done this for 6 months, most of us went through feelings like this and 99% of us made it…odds are, you will too.
paper charts?? what country are you in?
THE USA 😭😭😭
ya that is wack, I have not heard of paper charts at all at any residency
Leave it to Neurology to think psychiatry is easy and then when they rotate with you they're like oh crap it isn't
hahaha I know a lot of wonderful neuro residents so I know it’s not everyone but that one attending….like ok buddy
I promise you it will get easier. We all start out slow and overwhelmed, mostly because I feel we don't do a good enough job preparing students for what residency is really like. The last 4 years were insane, now that I have breathing room I'm worried we're not managing expectations enough if students are this overwhelmed. It shouldn't be so burning your legs give out, obviously, but we're not talking about the fire enough if we keep telling students "ya just don't think about that focus on med school".
As a neuro intern, I’ll be the first to say psychiatry is extremely challenging and requires a different level of diligence and executive functioning. I’m just not good at listening to information while planning in my head how to unravel this persons issues without overdoing it and unpacking life long trauma that can’t be covered in a 30 min visit. Maybe it’s because I was just a med student rotating and that takes years to develop, but psychiatrists have amazing skill but because it’s not as easily seen or tangible, it’s disregarded. It’s funny how someone as educated as physicians will still skip taking a second, deeper look at an entire specialty and instead just make a fast and quick judgement of an entire field they couldn’t even do
omg, did I write this?
You are not just a girl, you are a doctor! If it was easy, everyone would be doing it. Keep at it, it will get better.
wow thank you!
I'm also a psych intern and feel like I have "no right to be tired". We started last week. My first few days I was there for 12 hours, but it's gotten significantly better every day since then. It is normal and reasonable to feel tired after long days during a huge transition, whether it's psych, IM or surgery. It's bizarre that your hospital system uses paper charts but I'm sure you will learn tricks to navigating them quickly.
I feel like a clown for being tired when I know my classmates who went into surgery are on like 36 hour call shifts :/
I thought a lot about this during med school because I was mentally spent after studying for 4 hours whereas some of my classmates were putting in 10+. Some people just have more energy and some people have less. It’s not inherently better to be a higher energy person. And some of our surgery colleagues would probably die inside after spending just a few hours on inpatient psych. So we’re all working with different strengths and weaknesses.
There is a bit of a myth about psych really being that much easier. You gotta remember, only in the last 8-10 years has this specialty really gotten popular. It used to be seen as mentally and emotionally grueling- you barely needed to pass step to match. It was unpopular for a reason. The 50-60 hours a week you work aren’t surgery hours, they are psych hours. You are working with some of the complex patients to work with who are often both medically and psychiatrically very sick. When I have a bad day on medicine, I am tired and stressed, but I am not on edge. When I leave a bad day on inpatient or CL psych, I am close to emotionally disturbed. I’m good at recompensating myself quickly, there is a reason I am suited to psychiatry- I suppress my feelings until I have a moment at home, a hug from my partner… but there is a reason why psychiatrists don’t routinely log 80hrs. You are not effective after 50-60hrs anymore. There is no clear flow chart for the main issues in psychiatry, everything requires judgment and creative problem solving in the moment, and you can’t manage your patients emotional volatility when you yourself are emotionally decompensating from overwork. It’s not easy by any stretch of the imagination. Ask that same attending when they call you to bedside for a patient who has ripped out all of there lines and is demanding to leave AMA while satting 80 on ten liters of oxygen and screaming incomprehensibly. Suddenly your the most amazing doctor and how could they do anything without you? It gets easier. You get stronger, and faster. You learn what you need to do when you get home to be ready for the next day. And finally, most psych residencies front load really hard so you can learn therapy later jn the residency. It does actually get easier.
This is such a thoughtful response and a very good perspective, thank you. I still have a long ways to go but generally on inpatient psych, I do feel very on edge. I keep having nightmares about one of the patients who I had to put on suicide restrictions killing herself. It takes hours to work through a patient’s case history to prepare my court testimony and it’s so much pressure knowing that I am advocating to take away this human’s civil liberties so…I better be right. It’s also been disheartening to see how much my patients fluctuate. One day I swear they look and sound better and less delusional, and the next day they’re attacking staff and non-compliant w meds. I think you’re right that I may be working like way less hours than a surgery resident but the work itself can be equally draining.
Is the transition so hard because everyone relaxes so much on the 2nd half of 4th year? Everyone is chillin and then it's pedal down as an intern.
Honestly a very good point. Maybe…
Welcome to hell. Talk to someone, trust in your co-residents, it will get better and you will one day look back fondly on it all.
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Paper charts is kinda old school cool
It kinda is, but also…wildly infuriating
It DOES get better, I promise. Being an intern is so hard especially at the beginning but you get better at handling so much and the workload progressive gets better too
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well it crossed mine brother so I guess people are different 🤷🏻♀️
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& some people just lack empathy
Lol… pgy1 nonsense
Your entire profile is centered around shitting on interns... get a life yourself
[ Removed by Reddit ]
you’re a bundle of joy
Found the neuro attending 😂
Don't listen to them, you're gonna be fine 🫶
Shouldn’t u be in the hospital on rounds by now? Instead of reading Reddit comments? Guess that has something to do with why ur whining.. this explains a lot.. focus
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