karynfrances

I am a psych nurse working in an acute psych unit attached to a general hospital in Qld, Australia. I am an 8th year Registered Nurse and I earn approx $30 (Aust)per hour. Our EEN's earn approx $20. If that helps?

Surely if you are in a large public hospital you would have access to a mobile psych team that could follow up these people through a phone call etc. I think you need to refer these people on to psych for the patients sake and to keep you safe in your job knowing you had done all you could for your clients.

I work in an acute psych ward attached to a general hospital. We have something in place along the HPPD in place. We start with basic nurse numbers for each shift and then according to the patient acuity our numbers can go up from there, we do not lessen our numbers though as a matter of safety. Generally this means more overtime for overworked nurses!

Yes the stigma exists, but people like you mrs c k will help to lessen this just by asking why

Typical of the government, need to see efficiency and productivity gains to warrant a higher increase in wages. I work in Qld and we have full time nurses working overtime shifts, 20 - 40 hours per fortnight sometimes, as we have not got the staff to cover these shifts. What are the governments going to do when we're all burnt out and unable to work. They need to see that to increase productivity and efficiency they need to employ more staff and train more nurses, after all we are providing a service to sick people, not robots manufacturing cars!!

I don't really agree that your skills that you have learnt will suffer, sure if you plonked me in the middle of a med/surg unit I would flounder for a while and would be considered slow by the regular staff, but if we get a patient on our unit who has med/surg issues as well as psych problems I can still nurse this person holistically. What I'm trying to say is that just because one does psych nursing it doesn't mean that you throw all your other skills out the window, they can be just as necessary in a psych unit.

It'll be a help to all the psych nurses who didn't do med/surg they'll be able to say that you'll be able to do a procedure better that them(means less work for them) or am I being too cynical? I went into psych nursing after only a couple of months med/surg nursing and haven't looked back.

Nursing issues: poor staffing levels, no lifting policies that are not adhered to,zero tolerance to violence policy that also seems not to be followed, increased paperwork and less patient time, inability to attend training/education because of poor staffing levels. Just to set the ball rolling!!

Generally 8 hour shifts is the norm in Qld, some places offer variations. We also have a shortage of staff and the staff we have is becoming burnt out by the use of overtime.

We are a 22 bed unit attached to a small general hospital, we have use of security when someone pushes the duress alarm or to prevent a situation by using a show of force. Our security also look for prompts from nursing staff in these situations. Our security guards also wander through the unit at different times of the day so the clients see them as less of a threat. We have also had training in how to restrain clients when necessary ( but as for follow up refreshers and practice, bad luck!).

Hi, we have a 22 bed unit and we generally have 6 staff on an am shift, 5 on a pm shift and 4 on night duty. We usually have a CN, and a mixture of RN's and EN's

I also work part time in psych and have a young family to care for. Just remember the reason you took the part time work for - your family- and don't feel guilty, the people you work for can't give you back the time you miss out on with your family. I love my job but my motto is "Work to live , not live to work"!

On our ward we have one permanent nurse under thirty (other than our grad nurse who is 20) we have one nurse in his thirties and most of us are in our forties a with a few in their fifties and a couple have reached 60. So no there is no age discrimination in our unit or they'd have no staff!!

the child really needs a lot of education about the whole episode and that if he continues to abuse drugs the likelihood of a good outcome steadily decreases.

people with personality disorders are very challenging. sometimes working with schizophenia patients can be like walking into a party where everyone is drunk to some degree and you are the only sober one there!! manic patients can be extremely tiring, and if the ward is predominately filled with depressed patients one can go home very low.

In Queensland we now get 3 months maternity leave, and I think you may be able to take it at half pay and thus get paid for six months. You can take up to 12 months off all together.

the world needs good psych nurses who do it because they enjoy it. keep on

we are having similar problems in our unit. managers are telling nurses to diagnose patients even though it is outside of our scope of practice and our nursing body has told us and them this. makes you feel that the work we are supposed to be doing is devalued and the added pressure makes one wish to get out of nursing.

I work in psych and I'm sure I'm a nurse!

how can you talk to a person whilst trying to listen and take their blood pressure? some things just have to be done without a lot of talk. I'd rather have the person concentrate on the job they're doing than chatting to me and making sure they get the job done right.

There are days when it is "just a job" but then there are days when you've worked your heart out and a patient says thanks and it makes it more than that. My Dad has always said that a nurse is just made that way and that if you haven't got "it" then you should find something else to do. I don't know if that's true but it makes me feel good!

looks like the time we get the final increment of this wage rise to bring us into line with the other states, they'll have headed back to the bargaining table for their next EB's and Qld nurses will be behind the pay scale again!

Hi, why should a person be beyond the law just because of a mental illness, if a diabetic patient assaulted you would that be OK because they have an illness? The person who assaults someone should be charged, it is then up to the court to deem whether or not that they are competent to be tried. At least that's how it should be!!!

Yes, talk to your superviser and the facility you work in should surely have some form of counseling service for staff. Do something about how you feel or the job will become harder and we need all the good nurses we can get. Good luck.

I don't think all general nurses just hide in the office. I have worked with quite a few. Some I think are fearful of entering the milieu, some percieve psych as being "easy". I have worked with one in our psych intensive care area who was totally oblivious of her colleague being threatened by a patient until the alarm bells went off! Some have started off in psych fairly ignorant but with time and education and enthusiasm from the trained staff have improved significantly. It seems that here in Aus that there are less nurses opting to take on psych training and that we are just going to have to use general nurses to keep our patients safe.