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A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 1)

Liat Katz December 18, 2015 29 Comments

Editor’s Note: This week Pulse presents the first installment of Liat Katz’s brave and forthright story. The conclusion will appear next week.

I am a licensed clinical social worker. And, occasionally, a mental patient. Today, in this inpatient psychiatric unit, I am more a patient than a social worker.

It is Monday morning, and I am eating breakfast across from Owen, a muscular, flannel-clad, Paul Bunyan-looking patient. Little pieces of his scrambled eggs keep landing on his copper-colored beard. I sort of want to motion with my hand at where the eggs are on his face, but I’m too tired, and I don’t really care. About anything.

Finding a Bed in Bedlam

Jo Marie Reilly May 8, 2015 4 Comments

Jo Marie Reilly

There’s a full moon tonight.

“That’s when crazy things happen,” my superstitious mom always says.

I’m a family physician doing weekend call at my urban community hospital. My pager rings incessantly. As I answer yet another call from the emergency room downstairs, I think, Maybe Mom has a point.

“Got a suicidal patient with nowhere to go,” the ER physician yells into the phone, against the background commotion. “This guy John has been here for three days. He’s casted on both feet and can’t walk. The insurance company’s authorization nurse says she can’t admit him because it’s not medically indicated–but if a doctor gives her an indication, she’ll authorize it. Can you do it?”

Q & A

Kyle Bernard June 20, 2014 12 Comments

Kyle Bernard

The interview had lasted fifteen minutes so far, and we’d made minimal progress. I was a medical student doing a rotation at a physical medicine and rehabilitation clinic back in my home state, Wisconsin. It was the end of the day; to save time, the senior resident, Paul, had joined me in the exam room so that we could hear Leora’s medical history together.

A year earlier, Leora, in her mid-fifties, had suffered a stroke. After a few weeks in the acute-rehabilitation hospital, she’d been discharged, and she and her husband, Ellis, had been lost to follow-up. Now they were back, hoping to resume Leora’s care.

Vanishing Act

Sudeep Dhoj Thapa July 19, 2013 No Comments

Sudeep Dhoj Thapa

It was a summer night during my first year of medical school. Small bugs danced about the school buildings’ lights and filled the air with their penetrating hum.

In the television room, located across a small grassy lawn from the dormitories, I sat watching old movies with my classmate and friend Rajesh.

Rajesh was tall and chunky. He wore his thick, jet-black hair combed back, which made his broad face and smile appear even more so. I’d known him since our first days at medical school.

“Everyone in my hometown knows me,” Rajesh had told me. “I’m the first one in my area to go to medical school.” Clearly he enjoyed being the pride

Hard Facts and Fiction

Brian T. Maurer March 13, 2009 No Comments

Brian T. Maurer

At Daniel’s first visit, it had been like pulling teeth to get this fourteen-year-old slip of a boy to talk. Despite my thirty years experience as a physician assistant, I hadn’t made much headway. I’d pose a question, and his mother would jump in to answer it. He’d slouched on the exam table, staring at the floor. Occasionally he’d lift his eyes to meet mine, then quickly look away.

Daniel’s mother had said she was concerned about him. He didn’t sleep at night; he couldn’t get up for school. He’d missed so much that he was in danger of failing his grade, and the year wasn’t even half over.

Daniel’s mother was not much taller than her petite, quiet son. She was

My War Story

Marc Tumerman May 16, 2008 No Comments

Marc Tumerman

My practice is in a small rural Wisconsin town just down the road from a large military base. I see soldiers pretty regularly these days; they stay here for several weeks of pre-deployment training before shipping off to Iraq. They come from all over the country–men and women of various ages, some single, some married and with families. Their health-care needs aren’t too different from those of my civilian patients: maternity care, chronic illness management and the usual scrapes and bruises. I like having them on my schedule; their Boston accents and Georgia drawls make a pleasant change from my neighbors’ familiar, made-for-radio Midwestern monotone.

I don’t dwell much on what these soldiers do for a living. I do my best to take

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: depression

A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 1)

Finding a Bed in Bedlam

Q & A

Vanishing Act

Hard Facts and Fiction

My War Story

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fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

fostering the humanistic practice of medicine publishing personal accounts of illness and healing encouraging health care advocacy

Tag: depression

A Day in the Life of a Psychiatrically Hospitalized Clinician (Part 1)

Finding a Bed in Bedlam

Q & A

Vanishing Act

Hard Facts and Fiction

My War Story

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