Originally Posted by NICUNurse2006
Do you think it would be a mistake to go directly into psych nursing?
Dawn
It depends on what you want to do overall.
It used to be that you had to have one solid year of med/surg to be able to look at anything fun like CCU, ICU, NICU, etc. There are exceptions to that now, but they involve more medical focus, not less.
Psych is a whole 'nother animal from most nursing specialties. You learn a completely different kind of assessment and there is a limited emphasis on the medical side of things. Mostly meds, side effects, interactions, EPS, and the like.
There is a medical component to caring for eating disorder patients, bipolar patients, AODA patients, etc., but it's a means to an end and not an end in itself. Think of the reverse situation. A cardiac patient might need a psych consult to deal with depression, but that's maybe 10% of their care. A psych patient may need a medical attention to such matters as a tube feeding for an eating disorder patient or lab draws to monitor the liver function of someone on Depakote or managing withdrawal for a detox patient, but the main focus for your patients will be the mental/psycho-social/emotional realm.
The low level of medical emphasis doesn't reduce your need for med/surg background (or at least, med background). Because you'll have less exposure to medical situations on a psych unit, I think you actually need to have a stronger background. The nurses I worked with were all a bit concerned that their skills were starting to suffer after a few years on the unit. The ones who fared best when they wanted to go back to a more medical setting were the ones who had the best med/surg foundation.
The reality is that psych tends to burn people out, at least temporarily. Some nurses take breaks and come back. Some reach their limit and move to a completely different field. Many hospitals refuse to even look at nurses who don't have that magic year in med/surg.
I did all right with just six months, but I also had years of assessment experience as an EMT, and I took a two month refresher course to re-tool my thinking.
Maybe you can contact hospitals in your area and see how they would react to a nurse who wanted to get back into a medical area if she has only psych background.
I wish you well.
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The Psychiatric Nursing Profession...a thread to begin learning about it
Re: The Psychiatric Nursing Profession...a thread to begin learning about it
