Posts in the category «Psychiatry, Psychology, Medicine & Mental Health» :

AI, Health Care and MENA

I was invited to attend the annual workshop by the AUC's Access to Knowledge for Development Center A2K4D.

I was in the audience of a panel titled Data Governance for AI in the Health Sector which was more about data unavailability than AI. Prof. Fatima Roumate raised an important point about the sovereignty of data and systems, Meriem Ben Tarjem addressed the emigration of doctors as being one of the most pressing issues in Tunisian …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Safety and Security (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a series on digital safety and security for mental health professionals, read part 1, part 2.

Encrypted Communication

End-to-end encryption (E2EE)1 is a welcome layer of security for communicating with patients. Signal was the first IM application to offer this. Signal is also very good for audio and video calls.

Whatsapp offers E2EE but it is developed by Meta which is not to be trusted.

Try to set Whatsapp …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Safety and Security (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a series on digital safety and security for mental health professionals, read part 1 here.

Password Managers

  • 🖥️ Always use a password manager. They help you generate very secure passwords.
  • 🗂️ Create a different password for each account. Reusing passwords between services is unsafe. For example, if you reuse a password between a social network and email. If one of them is compromised, these passwords will be traded online and attackers will …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals: Safety and Security (Part 1)

As psychiatrists we are required by law to keep our patients' information confidential. Knowing that their data is secure, patients feel comfortable disclosing personal details crucial for accurate diagnosis and treatment.

According to where you work you are required to follow certain laws regarding data protection. In Egypt, things are limited. We depend on paper records and IT departments aren't as resourceful. Occasionally you have to write a medical report on your laptop. Sometimes, patients …

لماذا أرفض الكشف على مرضى خارج مصر عبر الإنترنت؟

يتواصل معي مرضى مصريون مقيمين في الخارج لحجز جلسات عبر الإنترنت للكشف والعلاج، والسبب المتكرر في طلب المساعدة هو شعور المرضى بأن طبيب نفسي من خارج ثقافتهم لن يستطيع مساعدتهم.

وبالرغم من انتشار الجلسات عبر الإنترنت بعد الجائحة وتقبل المرضى لها وظهور أدلة على فاعليتها في تقليل أعراض الإكتئاب وقدرتها على مساعدة المريض على الإلتزام بالعلاج إلا أنني لا أستطيع الكشف على مرضى خارج جمهورية مصر العربية لأسباب التالية:

  • روشتة العلاج لن تقبل …

Advice for Registrars (Part 3)

This is part 3 of a post with some basic advice for psychiatry registrars that I send out every year. Read the first part and second part.

Reflective Practice (RP) 🪞

We have been running monthly RP groups at our hospital and it has been very popular. I learned about it from an RCPsych newletter and thought that this was a good idea to get trainees to share, reflect and learn from their encounters.

The value …

Digital Resources for Mental Health Professionals (Introduction)

This series of posts is based on a presentation I gave in 2022 before the LLM / ChatGPT hype started. I wanted to post it here but I felt the need to give the hype cycle its course first on the off chance that may be there is something valuable there. My conclusion is to stay away from "AI" for so many reasons but the most important one is that it isn't a safe technology for …

Advice for Registrars (Part 2)

This is part 2 of a post with some basic advice for psychiatry registrars that I send out every year. Read the first part here.

For Journal Club Presentations 🔬

  • 🚫 Don't write the name of your supervisor on your slides if they didn't review your presentation.
  • 😍 Ask your supervisor to review your presentation ahead of time.
  • ✉️ Don't surprise your supervisor. Inform them about your presentation few days in advance.
  • 🔬 When critiquing an article, mention the date …

Advice for Registrars

Pixel art drawing of a man standing in front of a monitor, very bright colors. The monitor is showing a list in bullet points.

I have been involved in the training of psychiatry registrars at the hospital. They are required to present cases for discussion and topics in the journal club, I send this advice every year:

  • 🕘 Show up on time
  • 🌅 or a little early to set up the computer
  • 🦺 Don't depend on Tech Support they have bigger problems to deal with and they will take time to fix your problem. Learning to troubleshoot computers at an early stage …

Psychiatric Case Scenarios As Visual Novels

An anime woman hiding a part of her face with a hand fan. Underneath her picture there is text saying "I understand that you've been referred to me by your GP because you're concerned about your appearance, specifically your nose. Is that correct?"

In the past two years, I have been supervising the educational activities at the hospital. Basically, the clinical case presentation and the journal club. I also provide one hour of teaching every week for registrars, psychologists and psychology interns.

Recently, I have been presenting short fictional clinical scenarios to supplement the case presentations as this exposes the trainees to cases that aren't seen often (since it is a private inpatient hospital with no child services …