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Discussion

Keeping up?

Hi!

I graduated nurse school six years ago and except for brief stint i addiction care I've worked solely at a psychiatric care facility. Since 4 years I work only nights. At night I have 36 mentaly ill patients and pretty much no other nurse or doctor to talk to.

There is very rarely any critical somatic events. Pretty much everything revolves around keeping my patients sleeping or handle mania, suicidal / agressive or violent behaviour.

Problem is that I now feel I'm forgetting more and more about what I learned in nursing school. For example pretty basical knowledge like anatomy, physiology, medicine (not specific for psychiatry).

I'm sure I'm not alone with this problem. If you are in a situation like mine, could you please inform me about how you keep your knowledge fresh and up to date? What websites do you use? Do you know about lectures to view on youtube?

A simple solution would of course be to work part time at a somatic ward or re-read litterature / notes from school and such. This is impossible for me for a couple of reasons I cant share with you at the moment. English is not my first language and I live in europe so please excuse my spelling and grammar ;-)

With kind regards

sskhh

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    I don't really have any advice because when I was a psych nurse I mostly just researched the current somatic issues we were seeing on the floor at the time. I mostly just wanted to say that your English is amazing!

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    I currently work on a psych/medical unit, so my patients are medically sicker than the average psych patient. How I keep up is that I do some homework on my own time: I'll research whatever medical conditions and non-psych medications my patients are taking, so I have a better understanding of what's going on.

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    If you plan to make psych nursing your career, you mostly need to stay up on emergent problems and know when your patient is going bad so you can get appropriate help, start CPR, call a code or whatever is appropriate. I've been in psych over 30 years and never had to do much more medically than basic assessment and simple treatments. Beyond that, medically ill psych patients are usually sent to medical until they're stable and don't need acute care anymore. I hope this helps. We need more good psych nurses. And always remember that med-surg nurses probably don't remember much about psych. We all have our niches.

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    • Experts
    I currently work on a psych/medical unit, so my patients are medically sicker than the average psych patient. How I keep up is that I do some homework on my own time: I'll research whatever medical conditions and non-psych medications my patients are taking, so I have a better understanding of what's going on.

    Love a good medical-psych unit! It can be total chaos but one of the most exciting units imo.

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    I'm sure I'm not alone with this problem. If you are in a situation like mine, could you please inform me about how you keep your knowledge fresh and up to date? What websites do you use?

    sskhh- Your English is great! English is my only language, and I think you communicate real good*!

    I keep up on my skills by virtually living nursing. I eat, sleep, breathe, and have fun with nursing.

    Also, a person is known by the company they keep, and the closest people in my life are nurses or paraprofessionals. For example, my wife is a medical nurse and we regularly discuss illnesses, diseases, treatments, lab results, etc.

    AN.com is a great place to be to learn, exchange information, get different perspectives, process information, and ask questions.

    Good luck to you in your endeavor, shkkk!

    *really well

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