Is Psych Nursing Easy?

Specialties Psychiatric

Updated:   Published

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?

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!!

Where do you work...can you pm me?

Psych nursing can definitely have its moments where it can be considered easy. But, so can any other specialty. I have been working as a mental health RN for nearly 6 months now. Prior to this I had been and ICU/ER RN for the past 4 years. In my opinion, the hardest specialty to work is the Emergency Room because you see anything and everything that walks through the door. I started out primarily as an ICU nurse, but was required to float to the ER on numerous occasions.

So, do i think psych nursing is easy? Well, sometimes, yes... but i also thought that ICU nursing was easy too. I mean, in the ICU, the majority of the time i only took care of 2 patients, sometimes 1, and on rare occasions 3 (that was definitely not easy). I say this because i was really interested in these 2 specialties: critical care and mental health. So, the more interested i was in these 2 particular specialties, the higher my job satisfaction was. I absolutely hated getting floated to med/surg and telemetry. I liked the ER, but always found it the most difficult for me. Pediatrics and L&D are two specialties that i will never be interested in working.

So, as far as which specialty is the easiest, i think it depends on which interests u the most.

So maybe I can ask you this...BSN Dec 2006, as someone thinking about getting into nursing. How would you rate the necessity to be technical versus having good interpersonal people skills. I know I have very good communication and people skills, but I am concerned about the level of technical knowledge and skill required for nursing. I believe it is something I can learn, but I am having trouble deciding if it is the right fit for me.

Specializes in emergency, trauma, psychiatry.
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...

easy it is not!!!

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:

YES!!!! agree again

Batgirl23, thank you so much for what your post gave me - strength to go to my acute care psych unit tomorrow, I hope so.

I am having a really hard time, yesterday 15 minutes before my shift was over I broke, just couldn't take it anymore and cried, right there in the nsg station. I feel so .... alone, its been more than a year, only a year on psych, I wish someone like you would be one of my colleagues, a mentor.

Many of my coworkers are masters of doing nothing, looking away when needed, nowhere to be found, supervisors come to the unit to check charts -15 minutes a day tops, pass few comments and that is it, no support, no one to educate newbie.

easy.....

Specializes in Psych - Mental Health.

dear aniutka

i am glad if my post helped you a little. that's what we should be doing with our colleagues, especially our newest nurses. unfortunately, your situation is still way too common. my advice to you, for what it's worth, is to look for a different place to work. what i have discovered over the years is that you need to work in an area that supports your personal and professional values & beliefs. otherwise, you will be miserable, risk burnout or, even worse, you end up giving up and "going with the flow" because it is easier...

we have implemented a residency programme in our hospital for new grads. they come for 6 months and receive both classroom education and 1:1 mentoring on an in-pt unit. by the end they have received lots of specialized training in psych. our provincial government is supporting this programme throughout our province in all hospitals to help launch new nurses into the workforce, to keep them in province and to facilitate knowledge transfer from experienced to newbie nurses. we have done 2 rounds now and it has been quite successful for our staff. [for americans struggling with healthcare reforms - this is one of the potential benefits of a publicly funded system.]

there are places out there that believe in person-centred care and support humanistic values. you might want to check out:

http://www.tidal-model.com/

this is the model of care from the uk we are trying to implement at our facility. many of our nurses have embraced this approach but it is not for everyone. it is strength-based and solution-focussed.

let us know how you are doing!

Well, to answer your question jcmoore2007...

I think both technical and interpersonal communication skills are equally important and necessary in any specialty of nursing. I think both of these skills can be learned and mastered over time. Of course, some may learn the technical skills faster than the communications skills, or vice versa. Keep in mind, communication skills not only apply between you and your patient, but also between you and and the ENTIRE HEALTHCARE TEAM (i.e. doctors, RNs, CNAs, physical/occupational therapists, unit secretaries, pharmacists, NPs/PAs, social workers, case managers, supervisors etc...).

Best way to find out about nursing or nursing school is to talk to or shadow these people and get as many opinions as you can from a variety of them. That should give u a general idea if you're cut out for this profession or a particular specialty.

Specializes in Psychiatric.

hey batgirl, followed through on your link and read a little up on this model. It sounds rather interesting, but I couldn't get too much clarity on actual practical applications of it. Could you tell me a little about changes your facility made in order to utilize the model?

Carolynne

Specializes in Pyschiatry/Behavioral (Inpatient).

When was the last time one of your med-surg patients ran off of the unit, into the kitchen and began wielding a knife? When was the last time one of your patients bit you and bent your fingers backwards?

I have 30 patients and there isn't anything easy about it right now.

I don't know about the knife wielding, but my impression is that our med surg colleagues put up with being bitten and having fingers bent back fairly frequently, when taking care of dementia patients. As I said before, while I by no means think my job in psych is a piece of cake, my hat is off to my colleagues who take care of psych patients who are too medically fragile to come to the psych unit. Now THAT is a hard job!

To answer the original question. I've done med/surg, tele, ICU, and currently work in the ER. All along the way, I've worked per diem picking up extra shifts in Psych. I look at Psych as paid days off compared to the other areas! And before you start bashing me, I'm very active in the milieu - I don't sit on my can behind the safety glass. The facility is acute care. I like working with the pts - even the ones that tell me the voices are telling them to rip my eyeballs out because I'm seeing into their head!

Specializes in Adolescent Psych, PICU.

Ive worked ICU (level 1 trauma center), ER (level 1 trauma) and even some NICU. My neuro ICU patients who were there for medical issues but were extremely combative and violent because of some sort of neuro trauma were the worse, coding pts for the 12 hours your there, pulling out trachs and vents even while loaded up on propofol, etc.

I now work is psych and yes, it is much easier--that's why I do it. Even the acute units with 30 patients crazy and violent (which we restrain and drug up the best we can) are easier than my days in ICU and ER.

Specializes in Adolescent Psych, PICU.

I wanted to add to my above thread-- that I love psych! But imo and in my experience it is one of the easier nursing jobs, especially my unit (and I can only talk about the units that I have worked on).....and Im happy to be a part of that, Im happy to not leave work crying anymore or stressed out everyday, I like my patients and I love working with them. But I also know that when I did hospital nursing we were also understaffed, under everything it seemed, Im glad to be done with that.

I got so burnt out and sick of hospital nursing I would never go back. I love psych, I love the teens I work with and the staff I work with :)

I wish more nurses would consider psych. If you hate bedside nursing, consider psych, especially lower acuity units and RTCs. There are some psych units that are horrible though and I would never work in.

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