Tmc Podcast: Interviews With Medical Specialists

Dr. Jeffrey Kirwan is a psychiatry consultant at Eastern Health who hails from a small town in New Zealand. His experience in rural hospitals, he feels, greatly accelerated his learning as a junior doctor. He explains when the best time to undertake a rural rotation is and the myriad benefits we can glean from it, as well as why some of the disadvantages regarding references and lack of support are overblown. As interns, he implores us to speak us should we feel like we're not being given enough clinical exposure.  We discuss with Jeffrey how a consultant persuaded him to switch from physician training to psychiatry, and why he has stayed in this specialty ever since. His typical week involves great variety, switching from inpatient, outpatient, and community work to interaction with the legal system and consultant liaising. Each of these are rewarding in their on right: he sees community visits, for example, as an "intrinsic" part of the service, and finds it "enlightening" and a privilege to step into some