Friday, December 15, 2006

Gettin' called up to the big leagues

I am now working with medical students to test them on psychiatry. They have something called an OSCE (pronounce os-key for you those of you not fluent in med school-ese). In this standardized patients pretend to have different psychiatric disorders and then students are tested on whether or not they handled them appropriately. I was staffed to run a VCR and then make sure no one cheated on part of it; however, one of the residents who was going to act called in sick. You got it; I got called up!

I portrayed a person having a panic attack for five twenty minute sessions over a few hours. It was spectacular. At the end of each scenario, students were saying "you were making me nervous." That was music to my ears. The most fun was going from someone having melt down to completely normal breathing and calm when the bell went off.

Now, I am aspiring to reach the pinnacle of OSCE acting in psychiatry: schizophrenia.

4 comments:

Piccu said...

Are you sure you were acting? I thought was just a normal day for you.

BRATCH said...

So what was causing your mock panic attacks?

And what is the probability of someone actually having a panic attack in the presence of a psychiatrist? Like a billion-to-one?

I always figured people ended up at the psychiatrist's office to figure out why they were having panic attacks not to actually have one.

my_merlin77 said...

I have seen people in the emergency room as a psychiatrist doing lots of things; panic attacks included.

Are you people hittin' meth up there?

BRATCH said...

I forgot about ERs, they don't count anyway. I was talking more about scheduling a visit and scheduling the panic attack.

We aren't hitting meth, but I'm sure we could find some for ya. People are going old school and hiding them in corn fields like they used to and still do with marijuana.