Emergency pyschiatry

[dj_smooth]

I've just started my psych rotation today and was introduced to the idea of emergency psychiatry...is this something one can specialize in? maybe one would burn out from dealing with the difficult folks that come through the door, but it seems similar to what all the trauma junkies are looking for...

is there additional training for this kind of job?

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[Arginine]

I used to work as a psychiatric social worker in a psych emergency department, and all the psychiatrists who worked there had completed a psychiatry residency without extra training. Some were fulltime psych emergency docs, while others worked one or two shifts per week. The best thing about the psych emergency dept was the camaraderie (some of the funniest, most intelligent people I've ever worked with) and of course the adrenalin. The psychiatrists who only worked a few shifts in psych emergency often had private practice or other psych gigs in different settings.

 

[ckent]

I think that all psychiatrists could work in large ER's seeing patients. I don't know about other psych programs, but I know that my school's psych program requires all of their residents to do rotations in the ER (or psych urgent care). They have a very liberal admission policy at my school, but I guess that it's just because why bother sending a pt home when the in-pt team gets paid more when you admit them and you avoid the legal hassle of having a pt's family sue you when they commit suicide. I found it interesting howa significant number of pt's would suddenly change their story when they realized that they were being admitted against their will, but the psychiatrists still wouldn't let them back out of it. I don't know if there have ever been any studies to confirm this, but I always thought that the pt's who were adamant against being admitted and the pt's that wanted to be admitted were the lowest risk pt in terms of suicide/homicide risk because clearly, they are future oriented. It's the indifferent ones that I would worry about.