New Grad Interested In State Hospital

mangopeach · Sep 23, 2011

I'm interested in this topic. I don't graduate till May and I'm going to be doing my psych rotation at a state hospital later this semester. I would love to work there when I graduate.

HelpMeNewGradRN · Sep 24, 2011

I'm interested in this topic. I don't graduate till May and I'm going to be doing my psych rotation at a state hospital later this semester. I would love to work there when I graduate.

I really wish I could have had my rotation there. I have an interview set up for the PCU, but I feel so torn because I loved psych so much. Good luck!

ccoombs · Sep 24, 2011

I'm a new grad who is currently working at a state hospital in GA. I'm sure things vary greatly from state to state but state hospitals are great places to cut your teeth. I have been orienting on the acute male admission unit and typically the patients we see are the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor. It often feels like a psych icu. A lot of schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and acute mania. Many of the patients also have substance abuse or personality disorders. State hospitals can be great places to practice in crisis identification and deescalation using both pharmacological and non-pharmacological techniques.

HelpMeNewGradRN · Sep 24, 2011

I'm a new grad who is currently working at a state hospital in GA. I'm sure things vary greatly from state to state but state hospitals are great places to cut your teeth. I have been orienting on the acute male admission unit and typically the patients we see are the sickest of the sick and the poorest of the poor. It often feels like a psych icu. A lot of schizophrenia, schizoaffective, and acute mania. Many of the patients also have substance abuse or personality disorders. State hospitals can be great places to practice in crisis identification and deescalation using both pharmacological and non-pharmacological techniques.

Psych ICU is a great way to put it. I only had one schizophrenic patient and one schizoaffective patient in my psych rotation. I was on the psych unit at a local hospital. How do you feel about people saying "Well, you really should do at least a year med/surg before anything else"? Do you think it would really be that difficult to start a job on a med/surg unit after being a psych nurse?

ccoombs · Sep 24, 2011

I honestly think if you know what you want to do, then do it. If you have the desire to stay current on medical issues then you will and psychiatric patients have a lot of medical problems anyhow. Also skills are skills, if you learned them once you can learn them again.

Meriwhen, ASN, BSN, MSN, RN · Sep 24, 2011

I honestly think if you know what you want to do, then do it. If you have the desire to stay current on medical issues then you will and psychiatric patients have a lot of medical problems anyhow. Also skills are skills, if you learned them once you can learn them again.

Agreed. People are convinced that when psych patients check in their medical issues either go away or go "on hold" for their psychiatric admission, when that's simply not true. You many not be doing as many of the hardcore med-surg procedures but you have to address the patients' medical problems. There's plenty of opportunities to keep the medical skills up...especially if you decide to pursue geropsych or detox/addictions. The geriatric population have lots of medical issues that can't be ignored, and detox itself can be one very big medical issue depending on the drugs being abused.