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rQ
28th June 1988
NUS Medicine


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Wednesday, March 09, 2011, 5:05 PM
Geriatric Psychiatry

The past week or so has been the peak of my elective period so far! A mere glimpse into what geriatric psychiatry is all about has taught me a lot more than I thought it could. To be able to learn from so many intelligent, friendly seniors and to be given the opportunity to get to know as many in/outpatients as I can is truly an experience that I will cherish dearly through my clinical years. I never fail to be fascinated by something/someone every single day. Like I mentioned previously in my tweet, psychiatry is never boring... at least to me it never is ;)

Although I may not have decided if psychiatry is really the path I want to take, I have learnt one thing about myself and I can now confidently say that I really do LOVE to work with old people. I used to doubt my interest in the elderly population by thinking that it might just be a passing phase... but I'm more than certain about it now after going through this posting.

One good thing about being in geriatric psychiatry is the significant improvement it had on my Hokkien/Teochew! Most of the elderly communicate only through dialects and they use a much broader range of dialect vocabulary (compared to those in medical hospitals) due to the nature of their psychiatric complaints, hence exposing me to much cheem-er levels of Hokkien/Teochew.

It's such a pity that the posting will end in 2 days. I'm feeling a little upset about leaving the posting so quickly... I wished I applied for a longer period! Ah well. Let's hope that I will somehow get another opportunity to return to learn more!