Psychiatric patients and nurses have similar issues?

[Registered Murse]

Have you heard similar remarks from medical nurses? Are they just insults or is there any truth to these beliefs?

[Orca, ADN, ASN, RN]

During my time working in mental health I worked with several nurses with significant psychiatric issues. One coworker attempted suicide, and another definitely had delusional thought. Another started rumors about herself (invariably about whatever male staff member she fantasized about being involved with) and then complained that people were talking about her. It got so bad that her husband called me at work to talk to me about it because he didn't know who else to ask and how much, if any of it, was true.

I worked with a bipolar nurse in a rehabilitation facility and we always wondered how she was finished with her work while the rest of us were just beginning our morning pill passes. We then found out that she was skipping report (ours was taped, and depending upon what patients you had you might have to go to more than one room to hear everything). She bragged to anyone who would listen how well she was doing without her medication - so well that she lasted a week before she was fired.