abooker2

You don't need a medically focused foundation. You need a patient focused foundation. I've found that there are peers or managers or supervisors from med/surg or ICU always willing to help you out if you are willing to learn.

I work in a twenty bed inpatient med psych unit, a little different from what you describe because we must interact with our patients. In my state, there is a shift assessment where we ask if they're suicidal or homicidal, to rate their depression on a scale of 1-10, their anxiety on a scale of 1-10, and when their last bowel movement happened to be. Some nurses do that and the pill waitress thing, then spend the rest of their shift charting by checklist and shopping for shoes. You've met the patients/clients/guests we refer to as feeling "jailicidal." (I think psych nurses have a twisted sense of humor.) We see "homelessidal", "rageicidal", "drugicidal and drunkicidal", "boredicidal" etc in addition to those suicidally depressed and/or cripplingly anxious that we are hopefully able to help. Not as much psychosis as I fist expected and feared. Way more dementia. Everybody who comes to us IMHO needs to be helped (or "helped") by us. Most people who come see me are there only three to five days so there is always someone new with different issues. Our purpose is primarily for stabilization - to keep them safe - until they and the psychiatrist feel like they are able to cope without overdosing, slitting their wrists, shooting their loved ones, leaping off a bridge, running into traffic, etc. or (God bless them) holding their breaths until they just die. We are nurses, not therapists. I think a heart is a heart is a heart, but a mind, a mood, a personality, I find ever so much interesting. We see your cardiac patients when they have had to make lifestyle changes and are wondering if life is worth living. We see the wrist lacerations, the poisonings, the people from ICU who have tried to die I have seen the "real" nurses in the ER/ED/floors send us patients who are not medically stable. Diabetics ... lots of diabetics, courtesy of psych meds. I tell all the nursing students doing their clinicals that *every* nurse is a psych nurse. If it's not their patient, it's the patient's family. It's their co-workers, or their own families, or (dare I say it) themselves. My hospital allows prospective psych nurses to shadow one of us and see how our day goes. May want to try that. NP's have clinicals where they follow an NP. Maybe do med/surg or nursing home nursing briefly, so you will have a medical experience reference if you find psych is not your thing. I spend time listening to the patient before charting, which actually makes my narrative charting much easier and takes about the same amount of time. Don't worry too much about coming across as anxious. They are way more so, and tend not to notice. Best of luck in whatever you decide to do. Sorry about the stigma some departments and institutions have towards psych nursing. Where I work, psych has its own building in the parking lot of the main hospital, as if our patients need to be quarantined. Nurses who transition to psych without knowing what we do don't seem to stay long. It's perceived as "easier" but it's not. Just "different".