UofL Inpatient Psychiatry Rotation
General Information
The third year psychiatry rotation is six weeks long. Students spend all 6 weeks at one specific site, and there is a choice of various inpatient sites as well as some outpatient. The specific sites are the following: inpatient at UofL Hospital, Norton hospital (inpatient and consult), outpatient at the Ambulatory Care Building, Child psychiatry, psychiatry consult at UofL, VA psychiatric services, and Emergency psychiatric services.
Inpatient Experience
On the inpatient UofL service, students will spend their 6 weeks on the 5 South wing of UofL Hospital, which is the locked inpatient floor. Patients who come here have either been brought to the hospital on a mental inquest warrant, been arrested and taken to emergency psychiatric services (EPS) and then admitted, or brought by a family member/came in by themselves to EPS and then was admitted. These patients are acutely ill. Many of them have active psychoses, have attempted suicide or are planning to in the near future, or are actively manic.

Three attendings run the ward, and there are usually two interns and one resident on the service along with the two medical students. The students are responsible for following up on 3 patients or so. The attendings will get there around 8am, and the residents will get there around 7am. The residents want the students to have the patient’s labs and medications written down on THEIR notes for every patient every morning, so students must have this done by the time the residents get there. Students are also expected to go and talk to the patients they are following and running down the checklist of things to ask their patients every morning. You are NOT expected to have your notes written by the time you have morning report, which starts at 8:30am. At 8:30, the whole team along with all of the nurses and other therapists (group therapists, etc.) will convene in their activity room and the nurses will present each patient to the team. You are not expected to present the patients during morning report, but you are welcome to bring up any observations you had or anything important that may have come up in conversation with your patients. After they finish reporting on all the patients, everyone disperses and the attendings go to see their patients. At this time, the students can work on their notes and do any other work that the interns, residents, or attendings need. Once a week, there is MIW court, which is where the patients who are there on an MIW can talk to a judge about getting out of the hospital, and many times, they are happy to have students there to watch. They usually want one of the students to stay until 4pm or so, so one student can leave around 1 or 2, and the other can stay until 4.

There are no quizzes, and there really isn’t much pimping. The interns and residents will take time to teach every now and then. There is a psychiatry shelf exam at the end of the rotation. I studied using the First Aid for Psychiatry and doing the Appleton and Lange questions.

There is no specific call that you have to take for the UofL inpatient service, but you do have to take EPS call either 2 or 3 times during the entire rotation as a general requirement for the clerkship. For this, you have to be in EPS from 5pm until midnight. You will do different things like do the initial interview with the patient and the physical exams.

Conferences
During the first week of the rotation, the first whole day is filled with lectures, and then during the next few days, there are half days of lecture.

There is also a weekly departmental grand rounds. This is where an invited speaker comes and talks about various topics.

Also, at the ACB outpatient clinic, there is a drug representative lunch about three times a week that is open to students.