History of psych ward stays

[SugarBabe99]

I have a dilemma. Back in 2010, I was hospitalized and put in the psych ward for a week following a suicide attempt. I'm planning on applying for nursing school next year and hopefully becoming a nurse. However, some people were telling me I may have difficulty due to my history of staying in a psychiatric ward and mental health issues. Is this true? I was under the impression that any sort of medical records were STRICTLY confidential, that they wouldn't be able to find out this sort of information and that the only thing that would affect your chances of employment were a criminal background. I had NO idea that psych ward stays were public knowledge, I think this is screwed up. I didn't do anything illegal or criminal, I didn't hurt anyone, I feel this knowledge should be private and not affect my chances of obtaining employment. I'm really disappointed, I'm wondering if I should just give up on my hopes of being a nurse now due to a mistake I made during a bad period in my life.

[Jenpea71]

I don't see how a nursing program would know about your hospital stay unless it involved a criminal record of some kind. They will do a background check but they will be looking for arrests, etc. What is more important is that you are mentally healthy and taking good care of yourself!

[x_factor]

Actually, there's a very good chance they may have to know. At my school, we had to fill out a form, which was to be sent off to the board of nursing to make sure that we were "licenseable" before starting the program. One thing on the form was that we were required to disclose any medical condition that we were under specialized care for within the last 10 years, and it gave examples such as mental or psychiactric, oncology, neuro, cardio, respiratory, ect. and to list the condition, the history, and they wanted written documentation from any and all treating physicians saying that we were cleared for the program and that it would not affect our ability to perform clinical or classroom duties. The form specifically stated that any falsification of the paper would result in immediate dismissal from the program.

Also, additionally, when I took my regular physical for school, the physical form specifically states to list any previous medical conditions that I had, any previous surgeries, illnesses, ect. So somewhere along the line, you will likely have to explain the history of your psychiatric stay, and will likely need to get clearance from the treating physician. Especially since it was only last year that it happened.