A Typical Week for a First-Year Psychiatry Resident
Monday
I’m on the behavioral health inpatient unit, which is roughly 7-7:30am to 5pm Monday through Friday with call until 7pm roughly once per week, and one weekend day 7am-7pm every other weekend.
I arrive and pre-chart on my patients, then I meet up with my attending to round before heading to treatment team to discuss patients with our team’s social worker and nursing. We finish rounding and I head back to the workroom to work on notes and call families.
We run the list with our attending in the afternoon, finish up our work for the day, and head out. I get home around 5:30pm (traffic is so much better than where I’m from!), do a quick workout while hanging out with my daughter and while my husband makes dinner, and go for a walk together as a family. I do bath and bedtime with our four-month-old, then we spend some time winding down before bed.
Tuesday
Since we have Academic Half Day on Tuesdays, my PA student and I meet at 7am to quickly pre-chart and round on our patients before running the list with our attending at 9am. We work on notes, and I leave by 12pm to head over for Academic Half Day, where we have great lectures on bipolar disorder and DBT as well as process group, where we meet as a class to discuss the experience of being a first-year psychiatry resident. My class often hangs out after Academic Half Day to catch up since everyone is on different rotations, though I usually go home to catch my daughter before bed.
Wednesday
Today follows the same schedule as Monday, except that we are discharging a patient. Therefore, we safety plan with the patient and make sure everything is set for their discharge.
In the afternoon, our team got a new patient. My attending, PA student, and I see the new admission together, then I help my student with the note as it is her first clinical rotation, and we talk about our plan with our attending. Today is my late call day, so when other residents head out for the day, they assign me as first call to their patients and I stay until 7pm to manage anything acute that comes up in the meantime. I make it home in time for bedtime with my daughter, then relax before bed.
Thursday
Today follows the same schedule as Tuesday. We have another discharge and another admission. I have dinner and another lovely walk with my family before bath and bedtime.
Friday
Today follows the same schedule as Monday and Wednesday, except that from 12-1pm we have journal club. Today, we focus on a trial that compared ketamine versus ECT for treatment resistant MDD. Each team presents a different part of the article and, as a group led by Dr. Thrall (who is awesome at teaching evidence-based medicine), we decide if we agree with the author’s conclusions. I head home around 4-5pm and my husband has dinner ready, so we manage to get to Eno River Farm after dinner as a family to have some of their delicious ice cream made from their own strawberries.
Weekend
Saturday is off, so my husband, daughter, and I head to the Hillsborough farmer’s market for a coffee, cinnamon roll, and stocking up on local veggies for the week. We then take a walk on the riverwalk in Hillsborough for one of my daughter’s naps, and head back home to make our grocery list for the week. My husband grocery shops so I can spend some extra time with my daughter, and we both get a workout in. I get to bed relatively early as I am on call Sunday.
On Sunday, I round on my team’s patients with a medical student who is joining me for the day. We have two admissions today. I work on discharge summaries for my patients getting close to discharge for the upcoming week and head out in time to catch my daughter for bedtime before doing light meal prep for next week’s lunches.
Read other Week in the Life narratives:
- Soji Ojo, MD, MPH (PGY2)
- Abdelrhman “Rooma” Elnasseh, MD (PGY3)
- Molly Fessler, MD (PGY3)
- Rachel Landrum, MD (PGY3)
- Carolina Nadal Medina, MD, MS (PGY3)