Tessa Oliver, MD

I got my flu and covid vaccine yesterday. This is my first time getting the novavax covid shot (thank you Costco) and I am amazed by how well I feel today. The mRNA vaccines would absolutely knock me out the next day, so happy the novavax vaccine did not!

My Facebook memories showed this 100 truths thing I filled out 15 years ago (I was 14) and apparently I wanted to be a psychiatrist back then??? I literally have no memory of this. 14 year old me was surprisingly prescient.

Like sir, this does not happen in real life, like ever.

Nothing like getting dinged on a step 3 cscase for not ordering a Pap smear on your patient you transferred to the ICU for DKA 😅 The preventative care section gets me almost every time.

Currently on forensics and I’m loving the opportunity to work on insight building with patients. I loved inpatient but often there is less time to work on those skills in such an acute setting. Brings me back to my first interest in wanting to do outpatient first episode work…

Last year I only read 2 books, this year I read 11! Turns out not being in med school anymore was the key because 10/11 of the books I read after graduation. Hopefully next year I can read even more!

Also I mostly think this is the effect of being with my parents. This does not happen when I’m out with my partner who is 5 years older.

Went out to dinner with my parents tonight and one of the restaurant staff members asked if I was in college and was shook when I told her I was actually a doctor. She told me she thought I was 22 (I am 28). I guess my retinol is working overtime 😅

Every stint I do on medicine I find a new thing to hyper fixate on. This stint it has been nutrition consults/maximizing nutritional status. So much liquacel, Juven, vitamins, and ensure. Love it!

Shout out to the APPs on our med psych unit for being my biggest cheerleaders after giving my second didactics presentation for the unit today 🔥

WASHINGTON (AP) — Biden commutes roughly 1,500 sentences and grants 39 pardons in biggest single-day act of clemency in modern US history.

Today was very good for my ego because one patient told me that they really liked having me as their doctor and another told my attending and I that we were the reason he was still in the hospital and hadn’t self discharged 🥺

Also not lost on me is the fact that a lot of people are commenting on “superhuman strength” which has been parroted in plenty of police killings of black people and comes from racist beliefs 🤷🏻‍♀️

Of course this makes it even more obvious that we have much to improve in terms of mental health care in our country. But also sheds light on the structural, societal, and personal violence that patients with SMI face 😔

This is just going to worsen the narrative that psychosis = violence and will only lead to more violence towards my patients. Chokeholds as a means of subduing a person is not ok.

Seeing other mental health professionals defend the Daniel Penny verdict has been truly appalling to me. What happened was a tragedy - a life lost that shouldn’t have been. I’ve seen countless agitated patients managed safely by EMS/nurses/and even during MHTs.

Got a Christmas tree for our apartment this year and we decorated today. Really getting into the holiday spirit now 😊

I’m so tired of having to advocate to get other health care providers to care about my patients with substance use disorders.

We’re so so close to getting it. Private health insurance benefits no one except like 5 billionaires. Universal, free healthcare would make everyone else’s life better. I still do not condone murdering health insurance executives, but there is no reason for private health insurance to exist.

All of my patients on our med psych unit are here with some amount of sequelae of substance use disorder and I am truly in my element 🥰 So grateful this unit exists and for the compassionate care we are able to provide for our most stigmatized and vulnerable patients

Today I said to my medicine attending: “I’m in my consult era” lmao

Hey fellow residents - if you’re willing to share, how much money to get each year for an education stipend? If you could tell me the $ amount, your speciality, and your program/geographical area if comfortable. Trying to see if our program matches up. Can also DM me this info!

Hey there! Psychiatry resident here 👋🏻

My inpatient psychiatry attending during feedback today told me I should do inpatient psychiatry as a career 🥺

Eliminate Clozapine REMS, FDA Panels Say Two FDA panels were almost unanimous in their opinion that the agency should eliminate restrictions that psychiatrists and patients say limit access to clozapine.

Patients, families help sway #FDA advisers, who call for eliminating the risk management program for clozapine, the only approved drug for treatment-resistant #schizophrenia. My story for Medscape.

#mentalhealth #MedSky #psychiatry

despite the world becoming scary i still have a perhaps niave but unwaivering belief that a better world is possible

These are stunning! You are so talented.

Cue my existential crisis about what my first job out of residency will be. Will I do a fellowship? Who knows at this point. The only things ruled out probably are full time emergency psych (too exhausting and overstimulating) and CAP (adults only please).

My month on inpatient psychiatry is almost over and I’m so sad to have to move on to my next rotation. The days have never felt long, I love the people I have gotten to work with, enjoyed the variety of pathology, and have found meaning each day in my work. I’m so grateful that this is my job.

One of my friends told me she "successfully weaned" herself off Zoloft. But she's still pretty down.

I told her "you will have to pry my Prozac out of my cold dead hands".

She's back on Zoloft now.

#StoptheStigma #MentalHealth #medsky