(no subject)

Lydia's taken on a practicum student - a graduate student at a nearby university looking for clinical training.
( Read more... )

One of the things I want to do is pass on the legions of good advice I've received in the past. Sometimes that advice is technical: "Usually you shouldn't diagnose an Axis II [personality] disorder if the patient has a primary substance abuse disorder." Sometimes it's philosophical: "People come to therapy because they have become demoralized. It's the job of the therapist to instill hope." Sometimes it's medical: "If an HIV+ patient ever mentions that their vision has recently gotten blurry or they have spots floating in front of their eyes, it's a medical emergency."

And sometimes, the advice is simply practical. Here's a sampling of the best practical advice I've received:

1. Always leave the clinic by the back door. Never walk through the waiting room unless you're willing to stick around and see someone if they ask.

2. Never mind what your graduate program taught you about appropriate therapeutic boundaries - if you work in a medical setting, touch your patients. Your graduate program didn't teach your patients about appropriate therapeutic boundaries. If you refuse to touch someone with AIDS or cancer, they'll think they know why.

3. Relaxation training is the aspirin of behavioral medicine. Hardly anyone can't be benefited by a quick relaxation training session. It makes the patient feel good fast, and it makes you look like a genius. However, like aspirin, sometimes relaxation training has catastrophic effects. Know the signs and be prepared.

4. Never write anything in the chart that you wouldn't be willing to read to the patient. If you think this is an impossible task, probably one of three things is wrong: (a) you're making clinical judgments you can't back up with evidence, (b) you've lost empathy or perspective on the case, or (c) your chart notes are too detailed.

5. Never expect a doctor or a judge to read something longer than a page. Yeah, they should - but they probably won't. Make your report more concise.

and finally, and most valuable:

6. Don't look in the bucket. If you ever visit a patient who is holding a basin, or has a bucket at the bedside, don't look in the bucket.

You don't want to know.

(no subject)

hobbitbabe recently posted questions about work - including asking about the oddest or most unpleasant work people had ever done. It got me thinking about my monkey job.

Then the monkeys came up in conversation today on our way home from work. "I didn't say anything about the monkeys in my list of 100 things!" I realized. "You could post an addendum," curiousangel suggested. I gave it a try:

1. I shaved the monkeys.
2. I dyed some monkeys red and green with Manic Panic hair dye. But I only did it once.

"Hey," I said. "This has potential."

So, without further ado:
( addendum to the 100 things meme: 11 monkey job things )

[Note: I don't really want to get into a debate about the validity of animal research. Something I once wrote about the topic can be found here. My opinion hasn't changed substantially since then.]