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PaperclipPerfector  1d ago (text post)   795 thread views

Wellness Wednesday for April 29, 2026

The Wednesday Wellness threads are meant to encourage users to ask for and provide advice and motivation to improve their lives. It isn't intended as a 'containment thread' and any content which could go here could instead be posted in its own thread. You could post:

  • Requests for advice and / or encouragement. On basically any topic and for any scale of problem.

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  • Advice. This can be in response to a request for advice or just something that you think could be generally useful for many people here.

  • Encouragement. Probably best directed at specific users, but if you feel like just encouraging people in general I don't think anyone is going to object. I don't think I really need to say this, but just to be clear; encouragement should have a generally positive tone and not shame people (if people feel that shame might be an effective tool for motivating people, please discuss this so we can form a group consensus on how to use it rather than just trying it).

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What’s your new job?

@Throwaway05 is correct. New rotation, after a mercifully long vacation extended somewhat involuntarily by geopolitical strife. I've been enjoying it so far, for a value of enjoyment which encompasses and excuses being incredibly stressed. At least my colleagues seem nice: a cute Dutch doctor said I have a great voice. She suggested I should be a voice actor, a compliment I have carefully filed away for later. And here I was thinking that I only had the face for radio...

Pshh skip the meet cute hoss, I want to know what the rotation is.

Busy......Emergency?

Goddammit, I wanted to talk about cute but intimidatingly competent colleagues complimenting me. It's liaison psychiatry.

Busy......Emergency?

Oh there's no rush. Get well soon.

Oh there's no rush. Get well soon.

Oh no, I was guessing that ED was the rotation.

Why is your CL service busy? Do your surgeons not understand how capacity works?*

*This insult of European surgeons not guaranteed to match the medico-legal requirements of British healthcare.

Sir. You are getting slow in your old age, that was a joke :(

I'm not sure if the workload I'm experiencing is typical, but it's almost always safe to bet that the NHS is understaffed and overworked. I'd say this counts as hectic but not unbearable, the primary annoyance is running around a very large hospital, and I get very lost half the time.

(It is very rare for anyone outside of psych to understand how capacity works. I barely understood the UK version until several months within psych, I was winging it till then.)

The meme in the U.S. is that the majority of Psych (and to a lesser extent Neuro) consults are inappropriate. Both tend to get Delirium/TME consults for which the recommendation is "fix the underlying medical problem" (with a side helping of "no this 85 year old grandma does not have late onset schizophrenia). Psych also gets capacity consults - any physician can determine capacity and should be able to do so unless something weird is going on. You call Psych if mental illness is complicating things only.

We have the same meme here too, but to be fair, I've only been here for 2.5 days, and it would be unfair of me to opine too hard.

Still, I'm tempted to purchase a cardboard sign that says "CAPACITY IS NOT ALL-OR-NOTHING. IT IS ASSUMED TO BE PRESENT BY DEFAULT, BUT IS EVALUATED ON A CASE-BY-CASE BASIS AND CAN VARY DEPENDING ON CONTEXT. IF YOU BLEEP ME BECAUSE YOUR PATIENT SAYS THEY'RE FEELING SAD AFTER A CANCER DIAGNOSIS WAS JUST DISCLOSED TO THEM, I MIGHT SHOW UP, BUT I WILL BE MUTTERING ANGRILY UNDER MY BREATH."

The more healthy hospitals I've worked in have often had residents (and sometimes attendings) cross lecture - psychiatry explains capacity, surgery comes to IM to explain wound case basics etc.

If you feel like tilting at windmills its a nice thing to try.

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