[angelchick]

What a great post! It warms me to know there ARE in fact Nurses out there like yourself, looking beyond....

You ROCK!!

[IMustBeCrazy]

Originally Posted by RNKittyKat

We treat the person. Unless their physical suffering is relieved, we won't be able to touch the psyche. I think patients are often misdiagnosed BPD. Take a patient I had on a recent shift. Patient presented with pain in his hand. No one asked him anything about the pain and blew him off. He came back several times to the nurses station which bought him a working diagnosis of BPD. Last night this guy was lucky enough to have a new nurse who wasn't burnt out yet and took him seriously. She asked me to look at his hand and sure enough, it was swollen and warm to the touch. I asked him the questions that should have been asked on admission. What did you take for it at home, how long have you had it, etc. The guy asked for Darvocet, not dilaudid or fentanyl. Just one lousy darvocet. The charge nurse for the unit felt in her clinical judgment it was a matter for the tx team, and the patient should sit on his pain till the morning. The new nurse wasn't comfortable with that and called the resident on call for the darvocet. Good for her. She had the courage of her convictions. Now maybe this guy is borderline and maybe not. He's still entitled to relief from pain and treatment of physical complaints based on an ongoing clinical assessment.

I come from a strong med-surg background. I'm the only nurse on my unit who has a med-surg background. I see from different eyes than my fellow nurses. Our patients present with a lot of physical complaints and conditions. It's just assumed that they are borderline. I find it upsetting.

Amen!!! I agree 150%! I have said it before and I will say it again, psych nurses need to have EXCELLENT assessment skills AND the fortitude to advocate for their patients, no matter what their diagnosis is.

The often thought but extremely incorrect sentiment of "You don't have to be a REAL nurse to be in psych" is a complete joke. If anything, you need to be even more on your game and be willing to be outspoken for the patients that are not able to do so on their own.

[inthesky]

im a new psych nurse who has mental health issues. My issues are actually what gave me my passion for behavioral health as I have suffered invalidation and ignorance first hand. I also know how hard it can be to function in life with a mental illness. Patients can feel when we are insincere.. people with borderline, probably moreso due to high sensitivity and the high frequency of rejection (sometimes self-inflicted) they suffer. I feel like there might not be much I can do for a patient, but i can always care and they feel it (well most =P). With pain, I figure that if someone is truly trying to 'play' me and is a true opiate addict, they are obviously not trying to get better and there isnt much i can do for them after 5 days. I feel more comfortable always treating pain. This definitely leads to complications.. like the patient becoming a regular..but each situation should be dealt with individually and there are no black/white correct answers in behavioral health.

I am very well-controlled now but there was a time in which I was doing psych tech work and i was not well. I hid it as best as i could, but it hurt me emotionally as I was not able to separate my own problems from my patients. There is a nurse where i work who constantly splits staff and can be unpredictable and malicious, but that definitely doesn't sound like you =P

good luck!!

=)