Final-year medical student Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine synchronous summative tele-assessments during a COVID-19 Delta-variant stay-at-home lockdown.

OBJECTIVE: We describe the planning, process and evaluation of final-year Psychiatry and Addiction Medicine summative assessments in a four-year graduate medical degree program, during a COVID-19 Delta-variant public health stay-at-home lockdown. CONCLUSIONS: We conducted separate written and clinical synchronous (real-time simultaneous) tele-assessments. We used online assessment technology with students, examiners and simulated patients, all in different physical locations. Medical students' examination performance showed a good range. This was comparable to other discipline stations, and performance in previous years. There was no differential performance of students through the day of the assessments.

Volunteering in medico-political professional organisations as a socially rewarding and productive activity: a primer for psychiatrists and trainees.

OBJECTIVE: To describe the rationale for, and benefits of, trainees and psychiatrists to be involved in medico-political volunteering. CONCLUSIONS: Volunteering for professional organisations and other bodies may be considered as an important advocacy role for psychiatrists. Such volunteering is meaningful through shared goals and achievements, as well as developing a sense of mastery and significance as part of a larger quest. Volunteering is also a professional developmental process that both enhances individual skills/career development as well as organisational efficacy.

Why it's worthwhile training as a psychiatrist.

OBJECTIVES: We provide experiential reflections upon the process of training and working as a psychiatrist, with the aim of sparking and maintaining interest in psychiatry as a medical career. CONCLUSIONS: There are many benefits and worthwhile experiences from training and working in psychiatry, especially in the privilege of providing holistic care for persons suffering from mental illness.

Mortality in hospital patients with and without mental disorders: A data-linkage cohort study.

OBJECTIVE: In the general population, people with mental disorders have increased mortality. This association, however, has not been explored in a population who at some time were inpatients of a public hospital. METHODS: The sampling frame was patients admitted to an Australian regional public hospital 1996-2010. Those with known mental disorder were compared with an equal number of randomly selected patients without known mental disorder, matched for age, sex, and year of admission. Mortality outcomes were determined by linkage of hospital data and the National Death Index. RESULTS: We identified 15,356 patients with mental disorder and 15,356 without known mental disorder, 25.2% of the former and 17.3% of the latter died during the study period. The odds ratio (OR) for death in those with mental disorder was 2.20 (95% confidence interval: 2.01-2.41) after adjusting for confounders, and their mean age at death was 4.6 years younger (p < 0.001). Other independent risk factors for mortality were being Indigenous (OR 1.72, 1.32-2.24), not partnered (OR 1.55, 1.36-1.76) or having multiple comorbidities (OR 1.65, 1.43-1.90). In the model that included multiple interactions, the ORs for death in Indigenous patients with mental disorder were markedly higher (6.6-9.5), regardless of other risk factors. DISCUSSION: Among patients with a history of public hospital admission, those with mental disorders have higher mortality than those without mental disorders. This gap in life expectancy mandates increased attention, by clinicians and health services alike, to preventable causes of death in people with mental illness.