New Nurse Starting in Adolescent Behavioral Health

TerpGal02, ASN · Oct 29, 2018

I would review psychotropic meds, their indications for child/adolescent patients. I would also review your therapeutic communication techniques. I would also suggest that you take another look at your Human Growth and Development and your Erikson's Developmental Tasks to review what is developmentally "normal" for the age group you are working with. I think it depends on the culture/patient population as far as what to expect. For example, I worked at a free standing psych hospital that took all ages and as far as child and adolescent went, all behavioral issues-think high impulsivity/aggression. I then worked on a unit in a general hospital that took adolescents and adults. They were more "picky" there on what kids they would take, just because of the mixed nature of the unit. We typically would not take kids with aggression issues. Always on a behavioral health unit, safety is your #1 priority. You will learn to have your head on a swivel, especially when it comes to teenagers. They don't yet have a fully developed pre frontal cortex so they can be impulsive and can also be incredibly sneaky. You will likely see a lot of patients who self harm as as far as the teens go, they can be VERY creative in what implements they use to self harm. I have seen kids burn themselves with pencil erasers, crayons, etc. Yu will need to learn to develop VERY strong boundaries and to stick to them, but also know when its ok to be flexible too. Good luck! I love adolsecents, they are my favorite population by far1

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Lappy · Nov 8, 2018

Congrats on getting a behavioral health job as a new grad. That's my dream! I graduated in August and applied to many mental/behavioral health jobs and have gotten rejected so far How did you do it? Is it a residency or just on-the-job training? Unfortunately where I live they only do medsurg residencies and discourage us from going straight into a specialty.