New grad advice!

[emilyray]

Hi everyone! I am a new BSN graduate. I just accepted my first nursing position at an inpatient adolescent psychiatric facility. I had a few clinical days during mental health at this facility. I also did my practicum in adult mental health and absolutely love mental health nursing. I am excited to begin my new career, but nervous as well. Also, I've never worked nights before. Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

[ianguitarist]

I've been a patient. I've had people laughing at other patients as nurses, I've been told my diagnosis and stormed out of the room, and I've been rudely moved to another section early in the morning while trying to sleep. Modern P docs don't like to give out labels or diagnosis. It's far more important to treat the person not the label. I liked my last experience, but I went voluntarily. I knew I wanted to get better. I had nice nurses that brought me meds; may be the only time you see them right? I hear that you are supposed to invite people to smoke breaks, I suppose that won't apply at your new job, but if their is a rec time allotment, I would try to invite people one on one and then announce it. It can be extremely boring in there as a pt. You don't get to see your favorite cable TV if you even watch TV and well, the people there are usually there recovering and may not be so much fun to talk to. I had a nurse come take my BP the first night I got there. He was so cool. He asked if I worked out. Didn't see much of him but I like him. There are great community resources where I live. We have a Recovery Learning Center where you can do WRAP. Wrap is a Wellness, Recovery, Action, Plan. Basically, you find your triggers and what you do to recover, so when you have a break down you have a plan. You won't be in a bad state trying to figure out what to do next. It's kinda like perioperative care where you tell them about post op before they are snowed out on painkillers. Hope this helps. Sounds like a great job.