DR . WHO
“ I think the most important thing is to be accessible . Different people have different personalities and different approaches . One may be very nervous that they ’ re going to kill somebody , another may have obsessive compulsive tendencies and wants to run everything by me and ask a lot of questions . Another may ask no questions – and those are the scary ones ! I want them to ask questions ! That first six months , there ’ s a steep learning curve ,” he said . “ If they feel intimidated or unable to ask questions , you ’ re not doing them any service nor are you doing the patients any service .”
After his training in med-psych , it ’ s no surprise that Dr . Kim has a passion for psychiatry . With a shortage of psychiatrists , he said , it can be challenging to get patients the help they need sometimes . He focuses a lot of his practice on women ’ s emotional health as well as geriatric psychiatric issues .
“ One of the challenges of primary care , even though we see patients all the time with depression , suicidal ideation , OCD , schizophrenia , all sort of things , the way you treat patients is based on your comfort level . A lot of people we see with psychiatric problems , we send them to a psychiatrist . The problem is , probably less than
a third actually follow through . If you ’ ve got a patient who may be very unstable with suicidal ideations or hallucinations or paranoia or severe bipolar mania , you have to know how to stabilize them because bottom line is , they may not get the timely attention they need . You have to feel comfortable managing these patients , but unfortunately , a lot of primary care doctors are not adequately trained to deal with these things . We need to give much more attention to psychiatric and mental health issues in this country .”
Dr . Kim makes time for at least one new patient in his schedule every day . This allows him to never have the same day twice and for there to be variation in disease presentation , a web for him to unweave .
“ I love treating chronic medical issues , but I think the greatest excitement is when you have someone with a very complex array of symptoms and you ’ re trying to piece the puzzle together and make a diagnosis to help direct that person toward the right treatments . You have to be able to analyze the situation , order the proper diagnostics and do a careful examination , but the most important part
( continued on page 40 ) October 2022 39