Any pediatric psych nurses out there?

Specialties Psychiatric

Published

Hey all,

Right now I work on a step down telemetry floor, been an RN for about 8 months now. I have a previous post on how much I dislike it. I've known since about one month out of orientation that this type of nursing is not for me. I'm looking for other opportunities. There is a psychiatric hospital in my city, well known and been in business since like the 1800's.... Is any one out there a pediatric psych nurse? I'm very interesting in this and it would be extremely different than what I do now which is a major positive thing in my eyes. There is also a drug detox unit which interests me, they don't hire very often because nurses tend to love it, the patients tend to sleep a lot.

p.s. If you don't have anything nice to say, get off my post right now.

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On 5/25/2019 at 11:47 PM, hppygr8ful said:

Most of the kids you will take care of are just pathetically sad victims of poor parenting.

Amen to that!

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Specializes in Child and Adolescent Psych.

I am in Canada and have a bachelors degree in psychiatric nursing. I have worked child and adolescent psych for going on 10 years. My unit is an 8 bed crisis stabilization unit, it is acute, busy, and for the most part a revolving door. We see kids from ages 5-17, average is probably 14-15ish. I have been assaulted numerous times, mostly by drug induced psychotic patients or lower cognition patients. Lots of littles that are ODD like to kick it up too but they are pretty manageable. We have access to security and 3 “hold/safe” rooms that the door lock, we also have the use of chemical and physical restraints if needed but that’s few and far between. We (as the nurses) run group therapy, individual therapy as well as some family stuff. We see lots of borderline traits as well coming through but usually for a quick in and out. Average stay for us is a week! I love what I do and my amazing coworkers make it a great place to work (we are only 10 regular staff nurses so we are super close). The thing with kids is they are totally malleable, eager to learn, and there is so much hope for change still there, I found with adults that was much harder to find. Lots of people have come and gone on our unit over the years, it definitely is a lot more work on our unit compared to adults but if you are good and like it you will stay forever ☺️ Also here if we have a kid in restraints or in seclusion they are on constant observation so we have eyes on them all the time! They usually have 1-1 staff assigned and are never out of eyes of nurses

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