Is Psych Nursing Easy?

Specialties Psychiatric

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I have a girlfriend who swears that psych nursing is the easiest nursing job there is? Coming from a med/surgical floor and feeling tired in my first trimester of pregnancy, I see the job announcements and am tempted to apply? Is it as relatively laid back as she claims? Also, can you get career pigeoned-holed afterwards? Like once a psych nurse, always a psych nurse?

Specializes in Family Nurse Practitioner.

of course, i welcome all that want to enter the specialty, but please review all aspects of your decision.

maybe after your maternity leave.

i also love to hear about new folks interested in psych but, and i could be reading it wrong, it sounded to me like the ops main interest in psych was because she thought it would be an easy job while pregnant. :o

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I also love to hear about new folks interested in psych but, and I could be reading it wrong, it sounded to me like the OPs main interest in psych was because she thought it would be an easy job while pregnant. :o

:yeahthat:

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I greatly appreciate all of the info shared in this thread. I am a new grad nurse on a med/surg floor. I have a bachelor's in psych and I am excited about getting a year of med/surg experience and then tranfering into psych. I am considering eventually becoming a psych nurse practitioner. How can I find out what the job market is like for psych NPs in my area?

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Specializes in Pediatrics, ER.

Compared to 14 admissions a shift on a crazy surgical floor, psych nursing is a piece of cake in some ways. I look forward to coming into work and I feel like I have it good as a nurse at my job. I get paid very well and the responsibilities of a psych nurse vs. a med-surg nurse are vastly different. Sometimes the floor can be really tough, but I never feel alone or scared because I have excellent coworkers and we make a great team. I pass meds to up to 12 kids, assess for side effects, admit and discharge, do intake calls, answer parent questions, assess medical issues (usually very minor), attend treatment team rounds, check in with the kids, assist on the floor, document half the shift notes, give PRNs if needed and help de-escalate. That's pretty much my day. Restraints are few and far between. I wouldn't say psych nursing is a put your feet up on the desk kind of job, but it's fun and interesting, and a whole different world. My experience in it just helped me get a job at a children's hospital in a medical specialty because they get lots of special needs kids with behavioral problems that go along with their medical issues and oh baby, is that right up my alley. Using my experiences in psych by talking through problem scenarios with her helped me get this job. So pigeon holed? Definitely not. You should want to go into psych because you have a passion for it or want to try something new though, because depending on your unit, there may not be much time for sitting around, and sometimes some of the things you see can keep you up at night. I think I'm luckier in some ways because I work with kids, I tend to get it on a more minor level. There are some severely psychotic, severely depressed, severely sociopathic adults (and kids) out there, and you can't fix everyone.

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My experience in it just helped me get a job at a children's hospital in a medical specialty because they get lots of special needs kids with behavioral problems that go along with their medical issues and oh baby, is that right up my alley. Using my experiences in psych by talking through problem scenarios with her helped me get this job. So pigeon holed? Definitely not.

That's great and congratulations, but it looks like you have not been out of school long (your header notes ">1 yr" experience"), so your med-surg knowledge and skills (as a new-ish grad) are pretty current. If you spent 8 or 10 years (or more) working in psych and then tried to get a med-surg position (or pretty much anything outside of psych), you would have a v. different experience. :)

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Psych nursing is definitely not for someone looking for an easier position. You have to have an awareness of your own presentation as well as what is going on with your clients and your team. You deal with an unbelievably wide range in levels of functioning and abilities. You have to have skills in assessing medically as well as psychiatrically. Will you be willing to follow up on the multitude of diabetics and cardiac clients that don't care if they see their pcp again? Will you be able to talk to a BPD client and not get sucked into their manipulations? If an outpt client tells you they are suicidal are you going to make the right decisions? Do you know whats involved in a petition? Are you willing to deal with that client that is having homicidal thoughts and you are about to draw their blood? Inpt and outpt psych nursing is dangerous and demanding. Do not come into pysch nursing if you are looking for any easy job. We need more nurses that want the challenge and rewards of psych nursing, not someone looking for an easy job.

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Compared to 14 admissions a shift on a crazy surgical floor, psych nursing is a piece of cake in some ways. I look forward to coming into work and I feel like I have it good as a nurse at my job. I get paid very well and the responsibilities of a psych nurse vs. a med-surg nurse are vastly different. Sometimes the floor can be really tough, but I never feel alone or scared because I have excellent coworkers and we make a great team. I pass meds to up to 12 kids, assess for side effects, admit and discharge, do intake calls, answer parent questions, assess medical issues (usually very minor), attend treatment team rounds, check in with the kids, assist on the floor, document half the shift notes, give PRNs if needed and help de-escalate. That's pretty much my day. Restraints are few and far between. I wouldn't say psych nursing is a put your feet up on the desk kind of job, but it's fun and interesting, and a whole different world. My experience in it just helped me get a job at a children's hospital in a medical specialty because they get lots of special needs kids with behavioral problems that go along with their medical issues and oh baby, is that right up my alley. Using my experiences in psych by talking through problem scenarios with her helped me get this job. So pigeon holed? Definitely not. You should want to go into psych because you have a passion for it or want to try something new though, because depending on your unit, there may not be much time for sitting around, and sometimes some of the things you see can keep you up at night. I think I'm luckier in some ways because I work with kids, I tend to get it on a more minor level. There are some severely psychotic, severely depressed, severely sociopathic adults (and kids) out there, and you can't fix everyone.

What an awesome nurse you seem to be. You explained in detail what you do. I appreciated your response so much. I am looking into becoming a psych nurse. My niece is Bipolar and I've been trying to help her this past year.

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Specializes in Mental Health.

Psych nursing is as easy as the type of unit one is working. I work in outpatient psych so it's not as difficult as inpatient or lockdown psych care. So, it depends on the unit.

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Psych nursing is as easy as the type of unit one is working. I work in outpatient psych so it's not as difficult as inpatient or lockdown psych care. So, it depends on the unit.

What do you do as a psych op nurse?

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Specializes in Psych - Mental Health.

I am soooo tired of the idea that psych nursing is a piece of cake... that we do this nursing because we can't do any other kind... that it is easy...

Sure, I have known colleagues to sit on their asses in the nurses' station. I have seen students breeze through their rotation barely talking to a patient. I have known nurses to come to psych to wait it out til their retirement. Frankly, I am sick of that being the picture of a "psych nurse." :banghead:

As others have posted, it is different than med-surg, but it is not "easy" if you are really doing psych nursing!

Most people go into psych nursing because they want to spend quality time with their patients, to really care for people and make a difference - to be with them as they make life-altering decisions and deal with profound life experiences and bear witness to their pain and anguish. If that isn't hard work, I don't know what is...

Years ago, I worked in outpatient psych. I had a caseload of about 30 patients and I was the primary therapist for about half of them. When I became pregnant, I had to transfer 2 of my patients - one was hep C positive and was very afraid for my safety giving him injections; the other became delusional that he his sperm had become airborn and that he had somehow fathered my child...(he had similar delusions about women on his bus!).

On my return after my mat leave, a patient with severe OCD started having dreams about boiling my child in a pot like the rabbit in "Fatal Attraction." Think being non-judgemental and caring in this instance is easy?

Several years later one of my children died as a result of complications of prematurity - he had multiple disabilities and was not quite 2 years old. Although you try to keep personal details of your life private, many of my patients knew about this because their appointments had to be rescheduled when I was off on leave and many read the notice in the newspaper. On my return, a patient of mine felt able to open up to me for the first time and share about the loss of her own disabled child years before. She had never talked about it and never grieved her loss and only opened up to me because she felt I could relate. Of course I could relate but it was the hardest work of my career to remain professional and focussed on her grief when my own was so fresh and hardly resolved.

I can't count the number of people I have sat with who were struggling with the question of if they would live or die today. Or the people who are so psychotic that a chill runs down your spine when you see that look in their eyes. Then there was the sleepless night wondering if a patient was psychotic enough yet to kill her elderly parents as they were afraid she might... would they be safe enough in their hotel room until the police were able to find her and bring her in? Or would she be able to fool the ER staff into thinking she was not really that sick?

I haven't even mentioned about the life threatening medical conditions some of our patients have: my NMS patient who almost died or the pt who did die of a brain tumour because the oncology folks thought he was "a malingering, depressed patient" or about the patient with Stevens-Johnson Syndrome... [Did I mention we do physical assessments in psych, too? Did I also mention how tough it is to get basic health care for a psych pt? :angryfire ]

This is not easy work whatever people might say. Having said all that, I have been a psych nurse for more than 20 years and I have loved it. Many of the patients I referred to were among those I feel I was able to help the most and with whom I worked closely for a number of months or years. If you want to go into psych because you love it or you want the challenge of something new, fine. Otherwise... :no: Thanks but no thanks.

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Specializes in Psych, EMS.

yup...easier, more fulfilling, more rewarding, more respect from docs, more intellectually stimulating, less dirty work, more professionalism, less task oriented and more process oriented, etc.. I love my job!!

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My friend worked on a locked psych ward at a veterans hospital for her first job. Her jaw was broken and she received a broken arm in two separate instances of patient versus staff violence. Yet she told me that in spite of her injuries, this was the best nursing job she had ever had. I'm not too keen on the possibilities of violence against me, but since I've been assaulted in my home health job, well, that's worse. At least in a facility, I would have the backup of my coworkers. I had absolutely no help from anyone when I was attacked on the job in home health.

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