All students are required to log patient “encounters” using their supplied PDA’s and the Pendragon Forms software.  While on their third year psychiatry clerkship rotations, students will encounter a variety of patients in a number of different clinical settings. It is expected that each encounter will serve as an opportunity for new or expanded learning in clinical knowledge and skill development. Some encounters will consist of observing someone else (an attending, a resident, another student) interact with a patient or family member, but most encounters should involve some sort of active involvement on the part of the student.

While it is expected that any one clinical encounter can and should lead to thinking and discussion about a wide range of psychiatric disorders as part of the differential process, students will be expected to have specific clinical encounters with patients representing each of the following diagnostic categories:

psychotic disorders
depressive disorders
bipolar disorders
anxiety disorders
substance use disorders
cognitive disorders
personality disorders

To help monitor student progress toward this goal and to enable the clerkship to address any potential deficiencies in the expected encounters, all students will be expected to keep up-to-date PDA logs of their clinical encounters and to sync their data at least weekly. Students must log at least 2 patients per day on average, which is a minimum of 60 psychiatry entries and 20 neurology entries.

Generally speaking we are interested in encounters which are considered to be learning experiences.  These can occur in inpatient, partial-hospitalization, outpatient, or substance abuse treatment program settings.  Encounters are “learning experiences” if they require you to interview, present, produce a write-up or progress note, conduct a chart review, discuss with faculty, or do directed or extra reading.  A “learning encounter” should require you to think and process information about a patient and his/her particular clinical issues.

It would not be considered an encounter for logging purposes if a patient were only briefly reviewed or summarized in rounds or staffing – unless you become interested in such a patient and do some follow-up and further chart review and discussion.  Patients encountered in group therapy sessions are not logged unless they become a focus of attention for you and you follow-up with further processing with your preceptor or the group therapy leader.  Outpatient encounters are to be logged when there is sufficient “encountering” experience to identify, with the help of your preceptor, a diagnostic and treatment issue.

For the purpose of PDA logging, patients are “encountered” only once, even though you might see them multiple times.  The exception to this would be if the reason for, or the consequence of, a further encounter were to involve a new or different diagnostic issue.  In psychiatry patients might carry multiple diagnoses, but a logged encounter should be for the problem or issue of focus at the time of the encounter.

Any questions on the above can be directed to Dr. David Carlson (clerkship director), Dr. Albert Samuelson (Bismarck campus), or Dr. Steve Hill (Grand Forks campus).