Is psych for me?

[freckles23]

Hey everyone! I am in an ADN program, in my 3rd semester (in psych rotation now) and should finish and graduate in December. Before going into psych, I always thought i was going to like it because it is interesting to me. Now that i am actually in clinical im not sure whether it is something i want to do. The hospital we do clinicals at does not have a big variety of psych patients, mostly depressed, bipolar or schizo and the patients are pretty much voluntary admits. Also having only half a semester of psych i feel its not enough time to determine whether or not this field is for me. I guess i am asking for guidance when it comes to this field of nursing. What made you want to go into psych nursing? How did you know this field was for you or what did you think about the psych rotation when you were in school? Just curious to hear everyone elses stories because i feel it would be interesting to work in but the short time and small variety of patients makes it difficult to know if this is the field for me. Also i feel therapeutic communication takes alot of experience and right now it is difficult to find the right words to say to these patients but i guess it will all comes with time.

[EatYourVeggies]

Some psych units are much better than others and some hospitals don't even have psych units or are as invested in them as they should be. My clinical rotation in psych consisted of two days on an inpatient adult unit, one day on an adolescent unit, and an outpatient day in a facility for individuals with developmental disabilities and some very chronic mentally ill patients. The whole rotation was somewhat disappointing and the instructor teaching the mental health theory portion wasn't all too great either. Anyways I always thought that I wanted to do psych nursing so when our teachers gave us a choice to put down our top three areas we wanted to do our final internship in I put mental health at the top. I ended up getting placed on an inpatient adolescent unit at a different hospital and and spent about 200 hours there. I really enjoyed my experience there and found the nurses to be a lot more involved. To my dismay they didn't have any full time positions for new grads after I graduated but I did recently get offered a position at another hospital for children through young adults so my journey will continue! My advice is if you are still interested in mental health and your school does a final preceptorship try to get placed in a psych unit (hopefully different from the one you have rotated on though sometimes there is little control over placement sites). Mental health is such an interesting area and the right environment can make all the difference : D

[vintagemother, BSN, CNA, LVN, RN]

I'm a new grad working in psych. To be specific, I've been working about 3 weeks.

I always thought I'd like to work in a psych unit or with this population. I worked as a 1:1 CNA in an acute care hospital while in nursing school. Most of my patients had psych diagnosis-hence the reason for 1:1. I really enjoyed my work immensely. I enjoyed it because I had good support staff and systems in the event of a problem. Re the RNs were so helpful and security was on site. Drs ordered restraints as needed, so I never felt unsafe. I really enjoyed therapeutic communication with and providing ADL assistance for these people.

While I never had a "psych" rotation in nursing school, I believe that mental health care is not separate from "regular" Heath care.

Working as a psych nurse is very different than my prior experiences in hospitals, SNFs and LTCs. The work is stressful, but I enjoy it. The reasons I enjoy it are that I really like the residents, I enjoy providing care for people, and also because I know my place of employment is set up with good systems that allow me to have a manageable work load in spite of having over 50 residents.

Many of the residents look and act like "stereotypical" psych patients, but some look "normal" and some of the "normal looking" ones have committed horrible crimes that are very sad. Some have had horrible crimes committed against them.