I'm working for an organization that provides residential and clinical services to the mentally ill. I'm the RN on a clinical resource team. We provide educational interventions and support for consumers and program staff when incidents occur, and intervene before they occur in order to keep our consumers safe. I work along side two social workers and a psychologist. Our team leader is one of the social workers. We are overseen by a psychiatrist.
The organization's mental health clinics apparently do not have any nurses on staff, and the psychiatrists there are giving the IMs. The psychiatrist who over sees the CRT is now thinking it's appropriate to get me to do the IMs instead.
When I started I was told that my role here was for consulting, advising, educating, and that I could not even do a finger stick to measure blood glucose. No treatment on any of the 1600 mental health consumers. That's the job of the treatment teams they see, as I was told.
Now they want me to drive to all our sites so I can inject people who are patients at the clinics since they don't have a nurse? A few things come to mind:
They're not my patients.
I'm not supposed to be doing anything invasive, so I was told.
The patients are being followed psychiatrically at the clinics, of which I'm not an employee.
I'm an unknown to the consumer, as they are to me.
I need to know who's going to monitor for side effects, not send people back out into the community and say see ya in two weeks for another risperdal consta.
Who's got the medical info I need to know before I put a needle in someone?
My gut tells me I won't be practicing safely if I do it.
