mamabear

I've been a psych nurse for 20 years, and it's about as real as anything can get. (I also work midnights only, so sometimes I've been "double zapped" for not being a real nurse and working a shift where I don't do anything!)

Thank you very much! I have nothing against men getting their prostate glands checked. However, I've never in all my years heard of a prostrate gland. Yes, I was being sarcastic (duh!). Give me a break :angryfire

No, this is by no means new. I'm a perfectionist who bores others to death with my petty annoyances, such as men getting their prostrate glands examined.

once again, it's "couldn't care less". :angryfire didn't most of us go to college and have to take english 101?

Another Trib reader! I agree wholeheartedly.

On his best day! If he knows so much about the history of psychiatry, as he claimed during the audacious interview, ask him who is Benjamin Rush? :chuckle (He's considered the father of modern psychiatry.)

I've had people in general ask me what drugs are "good" for a quick suicide, such as those with very ill loved ones, but nobody has asked me to help them. The Hemlock Society has published a "helpful" (?) book entitled Final Exit for people who wish the same advice. I flipped through it, and it gave me the creeps.

Then there are those who think schizophrenia and multiple personality disorder are one and the same :angryfire That really frosts me :angryfire :angryfire

How about admissions that come at shift change that the preceding shift knew about and didn't do JACK! :angryfire

Amen!! I graduated in 1982, back in the day when they were referred to as "patients". When my newer-to-nursing coworkers started that "client" drivel, I was honked big time. :angryfire It makes no sense whatsoever, and some of us posed the question: are we healthcare-dispensing waitresses, or something equally inane? :flamesonb

There's no excuse for that kind of behavior. It got so bad at my unit that the students wrote a memo to our clinical manager re: staff talking during taped report, staff ridiculing whoever was speaking on the tape, ridiculing the patients who were being reported on and, the corker, fast-forwarding the tape to what they felt was "more important" information. The manager read the memo in a meeting where the DON and ADON were present. It didn't put a screaming halt to such unprofessional conduct, but the staff involved caught hell for it, and deservedly so! Tell your instructor and, if that doesn't help, tell the manager and go up the food chain to administration. Several students stated in the memo they had considered working at our hospital, but, after the unprofessional environment they witnessed: no way. :angryfire

Some of my former coworkers had been at the 2 Charter hospitals in the area and they got the ax big time Some of them waited years to get whatever wages were do them. After this latest rude event, several of them talked about getting out of hospital nursing entirely.

I live in a small town/rural area of Northwest Indiana and we weren't unionized. Some of us wanted to investigate it further, but we were told: Catholic hospitals don't unionize; unions were only for "problem areas" (Gary, Indianapolis); there aren't any "nurse unions" (Nurses employed at the steel mills are in the steel workers' unions, there's AFSCME and SEIU, and I've heard of the Teamsters representing nurses). After a while, we got the hint, especially after vague rumors floated down from HR that it would be "frowned upon": nothing on paper, of course.

I worked at a satellite facility comprised of 2 psych units: child & adolescent and adult. On 3/3/05, our main hospital abruptly and with less than 2 days warning, closed the kids' unit. It had been a financial disaster almost from day 1, but it provided a vitally needed service to the community. So as not to single out just kids' unit staff, the suits "reorganized" staff, totally eliminating 27 of 51 positions. It was devastating, to say the least :angryfire Our "generous severance package" was a joke: one weeks' pay for each year of service, and whatever vacation time we had coming to us. The available jobs at sister facilities were either already filled or suitable for only a few staff: what is an educational therapist anyway? A teacher's aide? A psych tech that sits in on the classroom sessions to protect the teachers? My point is: has anyone else faced a similar rude event? How did you deal with it, if you've been able to? I registered for unemployment the next day and signed up with the state job seekers service, but I'm still reeling. There were several staff working while going to college, some who were the sole support of their families. My husband and I had just bought a house less than 2 weeks before "Bloody Thursday", as it is now known. Anyway, I'm mad as hell :angryfire

Excellent advice! However, aspirin and Advil are not the same. Aspirin is, well, aspirin. Advil is ibuprofen

I do too, and thanks for your post!

Amen and thank you!!

Since I work on a locked psych unit, the students all appear to be scared out of their wits! Even after they've been coming to us for over 6 weeks, some of them still seem terrified. How they perceive us, however, proved very useful. We have several prima donnas who, while listening to taped report, bad-mouth the person who's speaking on tape, make derogatory remarks about the patients or, in one instance, fast-forwarded the tape because, in their considered opinion, what was being said was not worth their while, relevant, etc. The students typed a letter to our manager, who read it out loud at a quarterly meeting with the DON. You never saw so many pale, frozen faces in your life!

As it's been said in this thread and countless others: nobody chooses to be an addict, anymore than they would elect to have diabetes, schizophrenia or cystic fibrosis. I've been clean and sober for 6 years; it hasn't always been easy, believe me, and it's certainly not something I looked forward to doing, once I graduated college. Most healthcare workers who are addicts got started on drugs for post-op pain or, in my case, debilitating migraines (this was back in the days when all the migraine meds were ergot-ridden nightmares: no Imitrex or Maxalt). Show a little compassion. But for the grace of God...

A few thoughts: The other day, I met a member of my RN graduating class and we talked about this very thing (mind you, this was back in the day of glass I.V. bottles, all white uniforms, etc.: 1982 ). Neither of us could recall any mention made of nursing diagnoses, but we both groaned over the killer-attack care plans we were required to write. I'm talking 5-6 pages, type-written. Somebody mentioned in an earlier post something about MD care plans. I don't mean to be flippant, but I didn't realize such a thing existed. Is it different for psych? The care plans we RNs are required to do are a joke! It's all on the computer and we have 3 problems from which to choose: altered thought processes, ineffective coping, and potential for harm to self or others. I think it's rather lame, but, where I work, you don't dare rock the boat.

Zip, zero, zilch and nada, for starters. :angryfire

Our hospital has Press Ganey also. We have to wear these stupid "Strive For Five" attachments on our I.D. badges. And it's really a load of laughs trying to explain that to some of the patients :angryfire

I've been an R.N. since 1982. If there were nursing diagnoses around back then, nobody thought them important enough to include in our ASN curriculum, and many of my BSN coworkers don't recall having to use them either. In the early '90s, my employer at the time didn't do much with them, other than buy each unit a spiral-bound book with a list of "Official NANDA-approved" Nursing Diagnoses; we got a good laugh out of them. In my opinion, they're as big a waste of time as nursing theory and nursing research courses: unless that's your professional speciality, why bother? And please, no flames.

You won't "let" your husband ride? And what does or doesn't he "let" you do? Or are we still in the '50s?

If my sketchy memory serves me correctly, back in the late '70s or early '80s there was some type of program in the works, initiated/owned/operated, whatever, by MDs that was supposed to train people to perform bedside nursing care. It was medical, as opposed to nursing, in orientation, and was supposed to grind out "healthcare technicians" in less than a year, and for dirt cheap. :angryfire Fortunately, several instructors from my alma mater lobbied vigorously against it (thank you, Nancy, Hazel et al ) and it never came to fruition. Hopefully, the B.O.N. has been made aware of this by now, and it will die a rapid, quiet death.