should psychiatry be a specialised form of nursing training?

Nurses Career Support

Published

Hi guys, as a hospital trained psychiatric nurse currently up skilling to a degree training course for nurses, i'm appalled at how little time is spent helping students learn true psychiatric nursing skills - micro counselling, psychotherapeutic responses and so on - to say nothing of the various different types of interventions and therapies available. It's my opinion that psychiatry is under-rated in the nursing profession and that too little emphasis is put on this part of nursing training. Any comments on how to make the system better, or do you believe it is fine the way it is?

[This message has been edited by jimbob (edited February 04, 2000).]

Up Vote Up Vote ×

apologies for the crappy typing but it's 0445 here in NZ :-)

Up Vote Up Vote ×

Jimbob - I spent 10years in acute and ICU care. Oriented to psych after going PRN cause I wanted to do something entirely different. Yes - psych nursing should be considered a specialty! All my other nursing skills matter very little is that setting - I'm going to take a class in psych nursing on my own.

In our hospital the psych nurses get very little respect and thats wrong. My eyes have been opened about how valuable they really are and each one of them deserves a LOT of respect.

Up Vote Up Vote ×

hi tweetieRN

thanks for replying - i'd forgotten that i'd posted this comment...

i just think that psychiatric nursing is such a specialised field - here in NZ even the psychiatric nurses themselves tend to devalue their worth by not up-skilling and continuing to develop their nursing excellence

not all psych nurses are deserving of a LOT of respect - at least, here in NZ, some of them are only in it because it pays better than general - but some of us are in because we see it as a very specialised form of nursing.

hey thanks though, for your thoughts.

Up Vote Up Vote ×
+ Add a Comment