I promise it's better than House day 2

While seeing patients is easily the most interesting part of project for me so far, I also get to sit in on meetings, planning and group sessions. The meetings so far have been mostly about interconnecting the different disciplines within the Family Care Department. The goal is for the medical residents to learn from the Cognitive Behavioral Department and social workers, the CB Department to learn from social workers and medical residents and the social workers to learn from the MD’s and CB Department. This is a process being instituted all over the country, but has really taken hold at Metro and the Cleveland Clinic. 

My mentor today, Michael Allen, is actually writing an abstract on the subject. Michael is a counselor at Metro and got his training from his social work (15 years) as well as CSU. What differentiates what Michael does from the psychologists at the CB department is really the way he treats the patients. He described it as learning about the patient as a whole, looking at the bigger picture of the person rather than focusing more on treating the symptoms. His sessions are currently twice as long as the psychologists’ and he meets with his patients every week as opposed to every month. I also got to participate in a group session today. There were 3 patients who showed up (because of the population Metro serves the average show rate for appointments is around 50%), 3 doctors, and myself and another person on project. The sessions have been focused around grief and today they were talking about the fourth stage, depression. We talked about the first three stages, then more in depth about depression before breaking off into groups and talking about times in our lives that we had gone through grief and experienced the depression stage. 

The interaction that I’ve been able to have with patients is truly a blessing. Not only does it give me insight into what it’s like to work as a psychologist in a clinic in the city, but also it’s also just overall needed exposure to my next-door neighbor of the city of Cleveland.