PSYCHIATRY
Length of Clerkship: 4 weeks (Rush= in-patient or consult/liason, County= out patient).
Call:
| "Rush: | 2-3 nights of overnight call |
| CCH: | 1 call night at Rush on 12/13 Kellogg |
Lectures: Lectures occur on Tuesday afternoons. There are also Group Supervision sessions on Thursday afternoons for all students.
Mini-Board: The main crux of the exam will focus on the DSM-IV criteria for all the diseases, so you should know those criteria cold. Also, be familiar with the more common pediatric psychiatry diagnoses including ADHD, Tourette’s, autism, etc. Also, remember that there may be some questions that overlap with other disciplines of medicine such as neurology and genetics.
Pocket Contents: The pocket books mentioned below, copy of mini-mental state exam (aka Folstein), and Mental Status Exam, a notepad to score the mini-mental.
Psychiatry Suggested Reading:
Textbook:
Clinical Psychiatry for Medical Students, Stoudemire. ISBN 0397584601. This is a thick book, but it reads quickly. Dr. Miles recommended it to us, but you can easily pass the mini-board without ever cracking it. Use it for preparing for presentations, reading up on pediatric psych, and reading more about subjects that are of particular interest to you. If you’re interested in psych as a career, then reading it cover-to-cover might be a good idea.
Handbooks/Guides:
Two books from the series “Current Clinical Strategies”: Psychiatry, ISBN 1929622309 and Handbook of Psychiatric Drugs, ISBN 1929622392. These two little books easily fit in your white coat and are a great reference during the clerkship. They are a must, since they have all the DSM-IV criteria that you could ever need. If you’re the kind of person who can take mini-boards well with only basic knowledge, then these books may be all you need.
Kaplan and Saddock Pocket Guide to Clinical Psychiatry. ISBN 0781725321. K&S are reportedly one the “THE sources” in psychiatry. It is not meant to be read cover-to-cover (even though it is small). It has in-depth information about pharmacotherapy. Also, it can be used often for the medicine and peds clerkship. If you’re going into psych or primary care, this is the kind of book that you want to have to keep forever and ever.
Study Guides:
NMS Psychiatry, ISBN 0781738482 - Very good for going through the meat of psychiatry, and very good questions at the end of each chapter. Good review the weeks before the test.
Blueprints Psychiatry. ISBN: 1405103345 Less dense than NMS, but good enough to get the basic topics down. A quick read.
First Aid Psychiatry, ISBN 007136420X. If you like the First Aid series, which has more than just outlines, but less than a textbook, this is a well-organized, concise source.
Pre-Test Psychiatry, ISBN 0071361553. If you’re a question person, Pre-Test is the way to go for any rotation, but for psych it’s very good. You will find questions about topics that you will not have read about in other sources. Topics such as genetics, ethics, and pediatric psych are covered here. Very representative of topics on the mini-board.
Appleton & Lange Review of Psychiatry, ISBN 0071402535. More questions and more difficult than Pre-Test. Some of the questions are ambiguous, and some of us think a couple answers are wrong, but if you’re the kind of person that gets reinforcement through lots and lots of questions, this book is for you. Some of the vignettes are longer than those in Pre-Test, and more like the format of the mini-board.