Ashamed of Disability

[BeOne77]

Hi,

Let me just begin by saying that I am a qualified nurse but what is stopping me from continuing in my field is that I am deathly afraid of the reaction I might get from employers who discover in which I am supposed to reveal that I am in the DMU because of having bipolar I disorder. This is what it says on my Consent decree that I am supposed to share with employers during an interview. Now I am aware of the stigma that surrounds mental illness and I do not know how to handle the rejection I might encounter with revealing this...This is stopping me from moving forward. I have been cleared to work and have not had any problems with my disorder in a long time. I am not sure how or what to say to an employer when I must hand over a copy of the consent decree in an interview which states this...I feel very uncomfortable and feel very vulnerable in explaining that I have been hospitalized in the past because of this. It is an obstacle for me. I feel like if someone knew that about me they would automatically pass me off and think I was automatically trouble, not wanting to work with or just plain crazy or any other of the misconceptions that are out there.

I just finished a 80 hour clinical in a hospital (they were aware that I had a mental health dx, on probation and in the DMU and accepted me) for an RN refresher course in which I realized that hospital acute care was not for me because of the fast pace. I originally had hopes of working there and I loved the interaction with the patients but the 6:1 ratio was a lot for me to handle with the complexity of the cases that was encountered and working 12 hour shifts made me physically exhausted. I have questioned whether nursing is for me or not because of the fact that I have to explain this DMU thing to employers. I have thought about Psychiatric Nursing but because I was in the hospital before I don't want that reminder about my past on a daily basis on how I was treated in those places. I am not sure about LTC because of the 2:30 ratio of some homes and the depressing atmosphere. I thought about Research Nursing which appealed to me. I considered going for my CRA but again the loans. I thought about being a Nurse Educator but going for more loans and not having solid clinical experience stops me.

One of my problems is that I do not have a solid year of Med Surg clinical experience but I find that is just too stressful for me. I graduated with my BSN in 2010 and had some experience with the Red Cross giving care over the phone and about a year of working with Cigna doing biometric screenings before my license was put on probation for five years. I have thought of doing something else until the probation is up but then who would hire a nurse in five years who has not been doing nursing? And I have searched high and low of what to do with a BSN degree but couldn't find a lot of alternatives. I do not have the 1 year of MedSurg experience to go into most areas and I find that I am limited. Is this true?

Does anyone know how to present this DMU situation to an employer in an interview? I feel like I am stopping myself because of this problem with the DMU but is it as huge a deficit as I am thinking? Most people in the DMU have drug and alcohol problems which is not my case. I have the desire, skills and know how to be a nurse, graduated, excelled, etc, went back to learn it all over again but don't know where to go from here with my options, the DMU, my own inhibitions about it, how difficult it may be to walk into an interview with a consent decree explaining your dx exposing yourself in in which I am ashamed that I was even in the hospital in the first place. And how would you as an employer react with someone who presents with this? I feel like this is stopping me from moving forward.

Any suggestions on how to handle this, how to get over the fear and move on?

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

I'll check it out this weekend while I'm recuperating from a loooooong week of training (State Surveyor school).

However, I am very unlikely to be swayed from my personal stance on meds, which is basically give me enough to make me normal (at least most of the time)!! I can't even imagine going back to where I was two years ago, when I was such a hot mess that I wasn't even sure I wanted to live anymore. Without knowing it, I have battled bipolar disorder since I was very young, and by the time I finally landed on my psychiatrist's couch I was exhausted. Meds have literally given me back my life....although not just meds, but SLEEP. I am a firm believer in the restorative qualities of sleep. It won't fix me all by itself, but the combination of what I call my "magic 4" and at least seven hours of sleep a night has done wonders for me. :)

[TerpGal02, ASN]

I think it's totally outlandish that nurses with mental illnesses are wrangled into these "one size fits all" monitoring programs. What is the point of random fox screens on someone who has NO addictions hx? Seems to me they are implying that if you have a mental illness you MUST he an addict too. This shows you why people are afraid to get help for mental illness. I have been hospitalized 3x for suicidal ideation, and thankfully in my state the BON can only find out if you get committed on an involuntary basis (and it's pretty hard to actually commit someone here). Ridiculous.

[ltress00]

Dear BeOne77,

I would like to encourage you. Everyone has something disabling to overcome. Sometimes a person is born with it, sometimes it develops later. Disabilities can be acute or lifelong. When you meet people that seem to have it all together, it is more likely they are better at hiding their problems.

Being afraid is an issue all its own. It is very difficult to get away from such a powerful emotion. I can't help but wonder if you would benefit from a different therapist. I travel 2hrs to see mine. She has helped me deal with my fears and anxieties. With her guidance, I am handling my fears well now. It has been a journey.

Please be encouraged to give yourself the same consideration you would give someone else in your situation.

As I read your post the words that really got my attention where towards the end, "I have the desire, skills and know how to be a nurse, graduated, excelled, etc."

I am refreshed myself by your words, they give me hope. Hold on to that desire!

It would not surprise me to find out that you are also very concerned about feeling able to give quality holistic care to your patients. If this is part of your anxiety, remember as long as it motivates you be a better nurse; it may not be a bad thing after all.

I can see from all the things you are doing that your longing really is to move forward. Keep that attitude!

[BeOne77]

Its funny that you should say that maybe I should see a different therapist which I just before I saw your post I was writing to another therapist who is a woman.. And don't women understand women better? I currently see a male therapist who I have been seeing for the last 5 years or so...Is he caring? Yes...but do I believe he understands a woman's conflicting emotions, understand how females can be nice one moment then angry the next because of something in themselves or circumstances in a relationship. No I do not..Hence the reason I am looking..My life has been surrounded by male treatment providers who I do not believe know the complexities of a woman's emotions..I wish I could post something here I saw on facebook which confirmed that for me and my decision to look elsewhere. You are familiar with the faces scale we use for pain management? Well this is more on a grand scale of what a typical woman goes through every day..the range of emotions were from happy to perplexed to distressed, to crying to sad, to frustrated to ok to curiousity to peaceful to understanding to worried, etc. There were about I would say 25 different faces which all indicate some kind of feeling or emotion compared with the males which were consistently even keeled, logical, and maybe sad but never emotional which puts into question my current relationship with my male therapist who really has no idea of this. Women feel on a different level. We can be irrational at times, loving and compassionate at others, worried to death, fear can grip us, we can be peaceful, ready to fight for what we believe in, submissive and the list goes on...So I am on the hunt for a new therapist..one that will abide by the consent decree but will be more willing to help me on an emotional level, one who understands that side.. Us women are different, we are made differently and feel differently...Any agreement on that?

[VivaLasViejas, ASN, RN]

I think it depends on the woman, and on the therapist/psychologist/psychiatrist. (I refer to all three because my own doctor does both my therapy and med management.) Personally, I'm glad my p-doc is a man; unlike many women, I tend to trust men in these positions more because I know what my own gender can be like.

It doesn't hurt that this particular one is more dialed-in to my concerns/issues than the average fella.....part of it is that he has a great deal of admiration for women in general, and part of it is simply that he and I are extremely compatible in our respective roles as doctor and patient. It might be totally different if he were older than me (he's nine years my junior) or more of an authoritarian, but honestly, if I were forced to pick another psychiatrist, I'd choose a man again. But, that's just me.

[sarit]

Oh wow! I totally want to hear people's responses to this thread. I had to do the whole monitoring thing because I was hospitalized too. (No hx of alcohol or drug abuse, either.) I volunteered into it thinking (wrongly) it would protect me from being investigated if I wanted to go to hospital again. I ended up in grad school in a health-related but not nursing field, and the monitoring program would just make it very difficult for me because they also wanted to monitor that! I just surrendered my license (not permanently) in large part to get out of the monitoring issue, but the BON is going to put up that I did so for being hospitalized for psych. This way I can continue in grad school unmonitored at least. I worry though about how the BON's publication will affect my job hunt in health care and how to explain it?

[jayebug]

Maybe psychiatric nursing isn't such a bad idea. I know you don't want to be reminded of your illness, but there's another side to that-one that maybe you're not considering. With all the stigma against people with mental illness, wouldn't it be great if your patients could see you working and contributing to society? If we hide ourselves away from the public at large, we're only conceding to the idea that mental illness is something that should be cloaked in secrecy. That we should be ashamed of ourselves, and drastically removing the mentally ill from the rest of the population is what perpetuates the stigma. Yes, maybe our direct managers should be made aware of our limitations, but that goes for anyone who has a chronic illness. Would you be ashamed of having diabetes, or cancer, or MS? OK, so maybe acute care in your case is like trying to fit a square peg into a round hole. But who wants to feel sub par every day, which is what working in that enviroment might do to you. You might be a mediocre acute care nurse, but an excellent psych nurse. And don't ya just want to be that-an excellent nurse?