From the first moment I wore my white coat, I planned a career that created meaningful connections, provided an intellectually stimulating environment, and an openness for creativity. It is for these reasons I believe psychiatry is an ideal field of medicine. Creating a climate of communication for a diverse group of patients accomplishes my goals as a physician.
In my youth, I volunteered in a geriatric rehabilitation center alongside my mother, a nurse. We brought with us our family pet Copper to make her patients smile. With the assistance of a therapy dog, we were able to help address the problem of depression in an elderly population. I recall how quickly they rebounded from an illness after an afternoon with Copper, and it taught
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I worked with a multitude of people from distinctive backgrounds and found myself consistently adapting to meet the emotional needs of each patient. Mental health is too often ignored and communicating medical care for different cultures can be especially challenging. It requires a great deal of insight as emotional needs are often unfulfilled in these patients. Watching their struggle to create a normal life motivated me to provide the best care possible.
Spending long hours at the hospital while working through my psychiatry rotation showed me the value of teamwork. As it was my last core rotation, I took on a leadership role with the newer students. I helped students take a patient history, note-taking, and navigating the space of a busy facility. I learned that as a member of a successful medical team, I needed to be available for my coworkers.
Over the past three years I have grown in my white coat from medical student to doctor. I envision myself as a member of a psychiatry team, contributing my years of research and experience. My unique blend of personal experience with medical school opportunities helped to create my desire to pursue a career studying mental health. I hope to discover a residency program that provides thoughtful, creative and scholarly outlets for my intellectual
By working together there is information sharing, improve safety and quality also collaboration gives knowledge to other professionals. (Littlechild and Smith, 2013).what I have learned through working in partnership with other professionals was creating a poster related to what each professional does. Some of the professionals I did not know how exactly they work together in partnership. Example: I was not aware of how a radiology would work with a social work and the outcome of that was that Radiology develop and maintain collaborative relationship with medical colleagues and participates in regular meetings with other professionals activities to meet the needs of a service users therefore they collaborate with Social Workers. By doing a poster and delivering information I learned a lot from the other team members, shared experiences knowledge and skills with other group members. Group work made me realise how it is very important to work in multi-displinary team, the benefit of it and what others can benefit from. During the poster each of the student was from different professional however we all had the question but each had to look at it in each profession perspectives. This gave an opportunity to everyone to go and search for each professional and communicate with the rest of the group the outcome of the presentation. By doing that, we exchanged ideas learned from each other’s skills and used it into practice. I have learned about sharing information with others, learned about communication and
The book “An Unquiet Mind” by Dr. Kay Redfield Jamison outlines her journey in the psychological world while dealing with her illness, manic-depressive otherwise known as bipolar 1, as described in the DSM IV. She talks about her manic and depressive episodes that caused her to fly through her undergraduate and graduate studies at UCLA. She dealt with her illness, the death of a loved one, and her overwhelming stress levels she gains from becoming a tenure professor. I find the book to be riveting, in how it encases mental illness as a good and bad thing rather than an “illness”. The way that Dr. Jamison was able to find success and love in her turmoil filled life shows how there is hope for anyone that suffers from a mental illness. Even before I had read this book, I had always believed that people with a mental illness should work within the field. The themes that this book encomposes is the idea of love and “rotten luck”.
Mental health illness affects 26.2 % of the United states adults ages 18 and up. That is 1 in 4 people as of 2004 ("The Number"). Mental health illness does affect over a quarter of the United states population to include me as one of the people who suffer from it. This has affected me and changed my life drastically. Aside from the difficulties of having a mental health illness is how people react to me once they find out. This is widely due to mass media creating a stigma for the mental health ill people that most of the general population tend to believe in the United states.
Psychiatry is a medical field that deals with the diagnoses, prevention, and treatment of mental disorders. The FDA is constantly approving drugs for psychiatrists to use that are supposed to help with in their practice. For example, Michael Levin-Epstein, who wrote the article “A New Way to Deliver Psychiatric Meds: Drugs for ADHD and Major Depression Now Can Be Delivered with Skin Patches,” shows how pharmacotherapy is continually being advanced by new ideas and approaches. However, Psychiatric drugs are not always the answer. Prescriptions are not a good remedy when it comes to the overcoming of a mental illnesses, because there is not enough information regarding the effects of the drugs, pharmaceutical companies are driven by profits,
life. Psychiatry is one of the frontier areas of medicine. Also, psychiatry is one of the
When I was a high school student I was deciding on potential career paths, there were three areas that sparked interest to me. Them being psychology, social work, and nursing. The results on many career aptitude tests suggested similar fields as well. Upon discussion about career choices in a class, a few of my colleagues, and teachers had discouraged me from entering the field of psychology as they stated that it was frightening to interact with individuals who were suffering, and that consequently I would develop a mental illness as well. The beliefs and attitudes surrounding mental health are very stigmatizing for individuals who have mental health disorders, this effects their accessibility and quality to receive help. The purpose of
In today’s health care organizations, fewer and fewer individuals are working as solo practitioners ; instead, health care is increasingly delivered through teamwork, and teams are a vital component in health care organizations(McConnell,2006). Bauer and Erdogen (2009) define a team as a “cohesive coalition of people working together to achieve mutual goals”. (p.213). According to McConnell (2006) , teams are united by a shared purpose , regardless of the team’s type, composition, degree of performance, or reason for being. In health care organizations, teams are utilized by leaders to address problems and perform tasks. McConnell (2006) states that teams can benefit the organization because they provide greater expertise, enhance morale, improve personnel retention, increase flexibility, and create synergy in the workplace..
With these two characteristics together, I feel like I can be very successful in any career choice, especially the mental health. I realize that I am likely going to have patients of multiple cultural backgrounds. Pairing clients with diverse backgrounds with others who are disabled for example, is a great way to be inclusive. Helping those who are going through the same thing is a great way to help them move forward through the problems that they are having. Patience in this kind of situation is very important. As a mental health provider, I understand that I will have to be patience will my clients. They are all having problems and they have come to see me for a reason, so why not do my absolute best to help them through their
Kodjo, C. (2009, February,2009). Cultural competence in clinician communication [Pediatr Rev]. Pub Med Central, 30(2), 57-64. doi:10.1542/pir.30-2-57
I’m Reina Roznowski, a Clinical Mental Health Counseling Student at Western Michigan University. I plan to obtain a license as a Licensed Professional Counselor, as well as be certified in Alcohol and Drug Abuse and Holistic Health Care in the state of Michigan. Counseling is a profession that emphasizes advocacy, empowerment, and wellness in order to aid clients with their problems. When I graduate, I hope to work in Michigan with adults struggling with substance abuse focusing on a holistic perspective to provide appropriate counseling services, diagnosis, and a wide range of assessments. Once I graduate from the Counseling Education Counseling Psychology Clinical Mental Health program at Western Michigan University, I will be able to become
This course has highlighted many attributes and challenges within psychology and its many subfields. Within the weekly research of the psychological subfields I was able to learn the impact of education and its effect on the psychological profession. Along with the applied aspect of psychology listening to the online resource psychfiles, I have uncovered information that has solidified my goal of becoming an art therapist Masters degree. My focus will always be to provide mental health assistance to veterans as that is where my satisfaction and reward will fill in for the low entry-level salary.
Cultural competence can be defined as using the ability of one’s awareness, attitude, knowledge and skill to effectively interact with a patient’s many cultural differences. Madeline Leininger, a pioneer on transcultural nursing describes it this way; “a formal area of study and practice focused on comparative human-care differences and similarities of the beliefs, values and patterned lifeways of cultures to provide culturally congruent, meaningful, and beneficial health care to people” (Barker, 2009, p. 498). The importance of cultural diversity in healthcare allows for the delivery of appropriate cultural autonomy. Showing respect for others will lead to trust between nurse and patient which in turn improves healing and health.
Having a sound knowledge and awareness on the impact of social and cultural variables is imperative for understanding the complexities surrounding human behaviors. Culture, which is primarily used to refer to the way of life of a people, inevitably influences individuals’ lives through language, dress, food, worldviews, institutions, art, material objects, beliefs, values, and attitudes. Similarly, social issues affecting individual lives may be influenced by economic, political, and environmental factors. Accordingly, as a mental health professional I believe it is essential for to develop an awareness of all the intricate factors which may have an invariable effect on the individuals I work with and will assist me in developing appropriate