Difference in Psych Hospital vs Mainstream Hospital w/ Psych Unit

[jeaniekadinee]

Hello everyone. I am finishing up my CNA this summer and wanted more information about what the CNA does in psychiatric environments. Also, what is the difference between a Psychiatric Hospital and a Mainstream Hospital that has a psych unit on one of the floors? Any advice would be appreciated. Thank you.

[Mandychelle79, ASN, RN]

Around here it means the stand alone pysch hospitals are more selective on who they will admit. I work on a unit inside a main hospital and we are more of a medical psych unit than a typical psych unit. We do IV's, trachs, wound care, caths and have even had a few fresh post op patients.

[Mandychelle79, ASN, RN]

oh and the big psych hospital in the area has separate floors based on DX where we are a mixed unit ( no peds/adolescents)

[EatYourVeggies]

From my experience being on a psych unit in a main hospital, a psych hospital affiliated with a main hospital and being directly next to it, and a stand alone psych hospital there is not a whole lot of difference in terms of setup and how it is run. I work in a stand alone psych hospital now and the process for getting medical services for psych patients like labs can be somewhat of a pain in the butt compared to being within a regular hospital. Also I found supplies can be limited as we routinely do not use certain items : / Usually the behavioral health techs on psych floors have a Bachelor's in Psychology, but some places do hire CNAs to fill the role. What you do as a CNA depends on the type of psych unit you are on (Child, Adolescent, Adult, Geriatric, Detox, Eating Disorder, Pervasive Developmental Disorder, etc. etc.).

[EatYourVeggies]

The stand alone psych hospital I work in is the opposite. We will pretty much accept any patient usually ones that several other hospitals refused. We only treat children through young adults though so the patients generally are medically stable. Though we have accepted odd cases like a patient with MRSA in her abdominal wounds who had to be on isolation for 10 days : O

[jeaniekadinee]

Thank you everyone for the input. I was just wondering because where I live they have the Memorial Hospital and then a different Psychiatric Hospital in different locations.

[Kooky Korky, BSN, RN]

vital signs, weights, feeding patients, helping them wash and do hygiene activities, doing their laundry, bossing the nurses around, refusing to help pick pts up off of the floor when they fall, yelling at patients, hiding, taking excessively long or frequent breaks, c/o to the boss that these nurses don't care and these nurses are lazy, rounds q 20 minutes, tying up the computers by being on the internet instead of where they are supposed to be, telling the nurses to do the aides' charting, sit with pts who need continuous observation, take pts to Radiology and to the exits at discharge time

anything else you want to know.?