Greetings, readers. I guess this blog has become an annual project of sorts. We'll see if the more laid-back schedule of R4 year will give me more opportunities to write.
Which brings me to the most significant update since my last blog post: I'm an R4 now! The first few months started off with some great travel to California, Chicago, Hawaii, and Ann Arbor, to name a few destinations.
[1. Congrats to my newlywed Phi Psi brother, Sam! High high high! 2. Visiting Danny and Mary in Chicago! 3. A family vacation to the Aloha State. 4. A pilgrimage to The Big House with psychiatry classmates, three years in the making.]
The other important update is the fact that I'm one of the chief residents this year. My term is actually almost halfway over, which is mind-blowing (and something I didn't realize until writing this post). Part of the transition at the end of R3 year was attending various chief resident conferences that taught me to recognize my leadership strengths and pitfalls. The most enlightening part of being a chief, though, has been watching these areas of my personality play out in real life as I work with residents and faculty. The way these interactions have helped me grow in my personal and professional development has reminded me of what I think makes psychiatry unique among medical specialties.
At a psychodynamically-oriented program such as Wright State, we emphasize the healing power of the therapeutic alliance. In that sense, psychiatry shares the same one-way relationship with patients that other specialties do. The patient receives what the psychiatrist provides (namely empathy, an emotionally secure and predictable environment, etc.). However, psychodynamically-trained residents can also appreciate how a patient could have reciprocal effects on physicians. In the process of providing emotional support to patients, psychiatrists can grow emotionally as well.
Sure, doctors in other specialties certainly have meaningful, sometimes life-changing interactions with their patients. I don't discount that fact at all. What I think sets psychiatry apart is that the experience of a psychiatrist benefiting from time with a patient (not just vice versa) is perhaps expected as part of the doctor-patient relationship; whether the process is a result of transference or counter-transference is less important to me than the fact that psychiatry patients impact psychiatrists more than we might imagine. When I recognize this process happening at my various clinics, it confirms I went into the right specialty and makes me hope I can transpose a similar process onto all of my professional interactions.