Change in career: Adolescent psychiatric nursing

Specialties Psychiatric

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I am a 57 year old nurse with 35 years of experience in everything from med-surg, oncology, telemetry, postpartum and most recently 15 years as an inpatient hospice nurse. I really need a change and feel I am currently in a rut and need a new challenge. I recently applied for a Adolescent psychiatric nurse job in a Hospital residential setting.

Does anyone here have experience as an Adolescent psych nurse?

Do you like you current position? Do you feel safe in the environment you work in?

Do you have any advice for me concerning what the job is like and how I can best prepare to be a pediatric psychiatric nurse (ie: educational material, advice for the job)?

I appreciate any input that you are willing to give.

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

Well adolescent psych is what I do and have done for many years. I truly love working with this population. Understand that there is a difference between adolescent psych (13-17) and pediatric psych (12 and under). I never really liked pediatric psych as much as I do adolescents. That's because children 12 and under are not a rule diagnosed with things like schizophrenia/Bi-polar/Borderline disorders. They are mostly diagnosed with conduct disorders. and really good psych specialists don't push a ton of drugs on children.

Adolescents are also diagnosed with conduct disorders but as they get closer to their 18th birthday we see more psychotic types of illness. There also a fair number of substance abuse, Autism spectrum disorders, and behavioral disturbances such as BPD.

In my humble opinion it helps if you actually like young people and are willing to delve deeply into the source of their distress, You will see many cases where abuse/neglect is involved that will break your heart but you will learn something from each patient of the frailty of the human heart.

You will also have to get used to talking to and dealing with some seriously nutty parents. The apples don't fall far from the trees so to speak. So if you were easily bothered by annoying family members in your other jobs Adol psych may not be for you.

Psych patients will try you in ways you can't imagine but they are a whole lot of fun as well.

Nurse to patient ratios tend to be awful - I have anywhere for 12 to 18 patients under my care at any given time.

It might be good for you to shadow a unit for a few days to see if it's something you want to do.

Hppy

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Thank you so much for your advice and wisdom concerning Adolescent Psych nursing. I do have an interview but I am concerned about safety for myself and the patients. I will have a lot of questions for the interviewer and will decide if this specialty of nursing is really for me.

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Specializes in Psych, Addictions, SOL (Student of Life).
5 hours ago, benharold1 said:

Thank you so much for your advice and wisdom concerning Adolescent Psych nursing. I do have an interview but I am concerned about safety for myself and the patients. I will have a lot of questions for the interviewer and will decide if this specialty of nursing is really for me.

It depends on what you mean by safety. Psych is psych and you can't control everything so stuff does happen. The trick is to develop a good sense of situational awareness. In nearly 20 years of working in psych hospitals I have only been seriously hurt once (once is more than enough) but it was clearly my fault and could have been prevented.

Hppy

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