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Specializes in Pschiatry.

So I've learned a hard lesson in the past month. I started my nursing career on a skilled floor of a local hospital, loved the job but couldn't deal with nurse bullies. Left after 6 months. 3 months later got a job on a psych unit, my dream job, stayed there 18 months. Wonderful job and nursing team. Absolutely loved it!! Enter a new nurse manager who took a cohesive well oiled, well-functioning team and ripped the fabric right down the middle. Suddenly, everyone was suspicious of everyone else and patient care suffered. With much regret, decided to resign. I decided, in my infinite wisdom (LOL), that I should give med/surg nursing a try. Oh my, lasted less than a month, cried every day. It's not every job that they tell you on your second day "here are you're 7 patients and you are responsible for them." I had 1 days training on the computer system and quickly sank. I have handled 13 psych patients without another nurse on the floor for 12 hrs with no problem. Lesson learned!

Thankfully I have now been offered a psych position at a stand-alone psych facility. After a lot of soul searching, I have come to realize that while I am an acceptable med/surg nurse, I am a great psych nurse.

The point of this post? Don't ever let anyone convince you that because you chose the nursing specialty of psych you're "not a real nurse."

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).

It's as real as it gets! Welcome back and good luck!

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Hope you will be happy going back. I dislike both psych and bedside just from nursing school and watching others. But now I work outpatient psych part time, so I just make enough money to pay bills and be left alone to enjoy my life for most of the week.

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Specializes in Psych ICU, addictions.
On 5/18/2019 at 11:17 AM, futurepsychrn said:

I decided, in my infinite wisdom (LOL), that I should give med/surg nursing a try. Oh my, lasted less than a month, cried every day.

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Funny you said that...I've had nurses come to psych because they thought it'd be easier than what they were currently doing, and they ended up crying daily in the med room when they found out that--shocker--it wasn't! They never lasted long either...suddenly, returning to their old job or going to NP school looked really appealing to them ?

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15 minutes ago, Meriwhen said:

Funny you said that...I've had nurses come to psych because they thought it'd be easier than what they were currently doing, and they ended up crying daily in the med room when they found out that--shocker--it wasn't! They never lasted long either...suddenly, returning to their old job or going to NP school looked really appealing to them ?

I am unhappy working in psych and probably will go NP if I can't get hired for anything else lol.

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Specializes in Pschiatry.

I love psych!!!!! It's actually the reason I went to nursing school. It's a different kind of hard compared to regular nursing. There are days your emotions are literally drained when you come home. Kudos to the med/surg nurses that can work in that environment, as for me, I'll stick with psych!

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Specializes in Psych.

Oh honey...you and I both know lots of nurses who think they are so superior to psych nurses...who would run crying like little girls after 30 minutes of actually having to do psych ?

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On 6/29/2019 at 3:28 PM, Zookeeper44 said:

Oh honey...you and I both know lots of nurses who think they are so superior to psych nurses...who would run crying like little girls after 30 minutes of actually having to do psych ?

“Crying like little girls . . .” you do know that this field, and this forum is made up of very powerful women who were once awesome little girls?

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