Thanet

Some patients relate better to males other better to females no matter what sex they are. I have seen a 5' 1" female stand in between two 6' plus male patients and tell them to stop fighting... It worked. I have seen different aged workers do better than younger or older staff. I have seen different ethnic groups work better than others with or their own ethnic group or different ones. Basically it is not what you are but WHO you are that will make a difference in any given situation. BYW I have been doing this job 30 years +

Not just in nursing but anywhere... People who get ETC and ECT mixed up.

Part of a patients assessment would be whether they are capable to consent to a sexual relationship. And part of that capability would be whether they were able to have this relationship with appropriate protection, appropriate place, appropriate time etc. With the above in place the OPs original post would then be.. "What do you do when you see 2 ... patients having sex? will you stop them? or let them because its a physiologic need? help pls. "

I am very pleased that you have found a way to continue your registration. I am surprised that you felt you needed to de-register. I thought that if you did not pay your annual £75 renewal fee you would no longer be on the register. THAT was the reason that we were first told that we had to pay the fee,(Remember when it was only £30 for 3 years?), so that the registry was up to date. It would seem now that you actually have to go out of your way to get OFF the registry. The MNC keep writing to my wife to tell her to pay her fee or she will not be able to work... She has been dead for nearly two years, and was unable to work for 3 years previous to that. I phoned them to tell them this, but no, it was not good enough that she had not paid her fee for several years. They wanted me to send this form and that form etc etc. I refused to do it. So she is still on the register.

I can tell you're not married.

Yep, I'm all male too. I wonder if we will get someone posting who is half and half, or three quarters even?

I've said no. A bit mean I suppose. But there are many ways of being 'Better'. Allnurses is just a fraction... as someone mentioned above it is a good place to have a chat /moan or even find a link to somewhere else etc... but by itself Allnurses is NOT the way to become a 'Better' nurse.

12) Them: 'I could NEVER do your job' Me : 'What do you do for a living?' Them: 'I work in an Abattoir'

Have you read THIS THREAD? It might help you with your inquiry. Good luck.

My wife (RIP) was on massive dosages of morphine. She needed to be on them to stop the pain, otherwise she would just lay there and scream. It is good to know that, at last, some nurses and docs are starting to understand the difference between addiction and pain control.

Sorry, but...Celibacy is, in its strictest definition, the lifestyle of someone who is and is striving to remain unmarried all his/her life. However, the term is often popularly used to describe a state of life where one chooses to abstain from all sexual activities, which is strictly "continence"."

In the UK the powers to be e 'thinking' about the use of Psychiatric nurses in such places as you discibe... as psychiatric help is the sort of stuff that the patients , and relatives would/might want... and come to think of it some staff too. So while you might not be 'administering Chemotherapy,' you could argue that as a Psychiatric nurse you would be able to offer a valuable service to staff, patients and relatives.

Where did you get this little gem of propaganda? I'll carry on smoking like a chimney then, knowing I am being less dangerous to myself than " being exposed to 'second hand smoke' "

£73 this year...Tends to go up each year... I remember when this first came about - It was suppost to be a one off charge... then it beame a three yearly thing ... now each year... And what do we get for this fee?

I am not too sure that it is OK to bump up an old thread but here goes... I had to call in today late for work.. Reason?.. I was looking for an UFO in my back garden... OK so as I was getting into my car to go to work a neighbours kid aged about 5 came to the car and with an anxious look in his face said he has lost his UFO (Toy) in my back garden... well I just had to go and find it for him eh? Fortunately my manager thought it was sweet.

My Grandmother was born in 1904 and immigrated to America with her family shortly thereafter. When she turned 12, her Mother forced her to drop out of school and work twelve hours a day in a tire factory so the family could pay the bills. When she was 17, her family pressured her to marry a man she didn't love in order to gain financial security. Shortly after she said 'I do,' my Grandmother came to her senses and demanded a divorce. Back then, divorce wasn't as common as it is now and her demand caused a lot of controversy in her community. No one could understand why a woman wouldn't want to be with the nice man who wanted to provide for her and many dubbed her a strumpet. But my Grandmother stood her ground and dissolved her marriage. However, upon returning home, her family had decided in her absence that she must be crazy. Literally. They had her forcibly committed to a mental institution. Mental institutions were not the nice, clean, white places of healing they are today. Instead, they were filled to the brim with incompetent doctors who made snap diagnoses and ordered experimental shock treatments. Patients often spent hours strapped down in beds and force fed drugs that made them feel even worse. Some of them were raped, beaten, or otherwise abused. After all, they were crazy. Who would believe them? My Grandmother told me all of this for the first time shortly after my 19th birthday. I had recently found out something pretty shocking about my past (Another story for another day, don't worry) and I went to her for confirmation because there wasn't anyone else I could trust to tell me the truth. She did confirm what I had learned and apologized for her part in it. Destroyed by the news, I confessed to her that I was thinking about going into therapy. My desire for a Doctor to 'fix me' is what inspired her story. When she was finished, she said to me, "All the time I spent in that hellhole, people were constantly trying to convince me that I felt sad because there was something wrong with my brain. But do you want to know what I really learned?" I leaned in closer, absolutely absorbed by the image of my tough Grandmother who raised her children, nurtured her (Second!) marriage, and was one of the first successful business women of her era spending time in a mental institution. "What Grandma?" I breathlessly inquired. "I learned that I wasn't sad because there was something wrong with my brain. I learned that I was sad because my life sucked." Initially, I laughed because it was funny to hear my old Grandma use the word 'sucked' in a sentence. But after that, I worriedly asked, "Are you saying I shouldn't seek therapy?" "No," she replied, "I'm not saying that at all. What I am saying is that you should be wary of the Doctor who tells you a pill is a fix for your broken mind. The way I see it, you have a lot of reasons to be sad right now. So if that's what you're feeling, that seems about right to me." Now that we live in a culture where mental illness is so incredibly popular that you're almost considered abnormal if you don't have one, her words ring even truer. A lot of people nowadays seem to think that any sign of anxiousness or sadness signifies a broken brain, and immediately upon discovery will run with their asses on fire for their prescription of Happy Pills. "My brain doesn't produce enough serotonin!" they chirp. "This is why I'm always sad!" It's always the serotonin. It's never the lousy job or the loveless marriage or the helplessness one feels when they finally realize they've been pressured into living a life they would have never chosen for themselves. No, it's never that. It's always a broken brain. Now please don't misunderstand me here. I am not trying to lambaste psychiatric treatment nor am I denying the existence of real, valid, medically proven mental disabilities. I realize there are people out there who downright suffer from hallucinations, irrational fears and compulsions, and crippling life debilitating illnesses that wreak havoc on their lives if left untreated. I do not fault these people for taking the drugs they need to feel better. In fact, I applaud them. It's the people who try to eradicate every hint of sadness and anger out of human existence I fault. Negative emotions are a vital part of the human condition and it isn't until we experience them that we truly appreciate the positive opposites. In other words, one needs sadness in their lives to be able to fully recognize happiness when they come across it. Without anger, we can never appreciate the calm; our hatred and indifference emphasis our love. To deprive oneself of any emotion characteristic to our nature is to deny the very things that make us human. Our minds work the way they do for a reason. They are not broken. Modern day Americans are often trapped in lousy, disappointing, soul crushing careers. If they are not divorced already, their marriages are on the rocks. They live far outside of their means, rack up thousands of dollars of debt, and then they work overtime to pay for the toys they never have time to play with. They dedicate their lives to pleasing ungrateful children who won't amount to much more than they did. Hours of their downtime is spent in front of the television, switching from reality show to reality show, because it is easier to watch other people live life than it is to live their own. They feel all of this on top of the usual human maladies of sickness, death and grief. To be perfectly honest, I would think it was weirder if most people didn't entertain thoughts of suicide. The majority of people aren't sad because there is something wrong with their brain. They are sad because their lives suck. But rather than admit that to themselves, they run to the Doctor and beg for a diagnosis that alleviates their personal responsibility in this regard. After all, if a man in a white coat tells you're broken, you never have to worry about fixing yourself. The sad reality is that they'll spend the rest of their lives switching medications and wondering why nothing they take works and cures their disease. Never once do they consider that the disease is their life and true healing will come once attempts are made to repair it. If you are sad right now, I want you to consider that perhaps there is nothing wrong with you. Perhaps you are seeing things the way they ought to be seen. Maybe there is just something wrong with the world right now? Instead of popping some pills in the hopes that they will put us on a perpetual even keel, maybe instead we should figure out what is wrong with our society...and fix it.

During my second month of nursing school, our professor gave us a pop quiz. I was a conscientious student and had breezed through the questions, until I read the last one: 'What is the first name of the woman who cleans the school?" Surely this was some kind of joke. I had seen the cleaning woman several times. She was tall, dark-haired and in her 50s, but how would I know her name? I handed in my paper, leaving the last question blank. Before class ended, one student asked if the last question would count toward our quiz grade. Absolutely, said the professor. "In your careers you will meet many people. All are significant. They deserve your attention and care, even if all you do is smile and say hello". I've never forgotten that lesson. I also learned her name was-- Dorothy.

The last time this happened on our ward the consultant ended up in A&E (ER) having stiches in his head... so did three nurses with stab and laceration wounds. The patient ended up (via the courts) in a high secure unit. The judge was not complimentary towards our senior nurses. The powers to be NOW listen to what we say and read our paper trails. Record, report. Record, report.

One of my neighbour's children is allergic to every thing from (insert the name of a major UK supermarket chain here). So I'm thinking... If I buy brand X chocolate from this supermarket he would be allergic to it but if I bought the same brand from another supermarket he wouldn't be?

Record, report. Record, report. Record, report. Add incident reports, injury reports, untoward incident reports, near miss reports, restraining reports, medication reports, dangerous staffing level reports and anything else that your hospital uses. If your hospital/ward do not have these reports/forms... then introduce them. Use e-mails to your senior nurse/doctor or whomever. LEAVE a 'paper trail' as it used to be called before the days of the internet. THEN.. Record, report. Record report...

If this question is as stupid as the last one, then the answer is to pass on the information to the following shift.

if you are not going to do this thing until you are 'ready to leave'... then you have already documented, recorded, passed on information to the following shift, informed relatives, doctors, uncle tom cobbley and all. the thing i wouldn't do until i am ready to leave? ...poke my head around the door (of the room/bay area) to see if there is any change in the patient. and if appropriate update them to what is happening. and praise the cna for their observation.

The trouble about psychi nursing is the those outside the profession only get to hear about the violent patients. They don't get to hear the times that we sit and chat with the patients or play a game of cards or chess etc with them, or sit with them in front of the telly and discuss current world/local events or... or... or... There are violent patients in ALL areas of nursing given the right circumstances. The skill is being able to defuse the situation; even better is to prevent it happening in the first place. Good luck and welcome to Psychi nursing

'Hello, this is Mr X my wife can't come into work today as she is giving birth to a cow' As we all knew that Mr and Mrs X breed Rare breed cattle it was a reasonable excuse.

Yes , I have been to coroners court. We (there were several of us) had good support from our trust's legal team and they told us the sort of thing we could expect and what the proccedure would be. We also had good support from our immediate manager and his manager. Yes we had to write statements ( this is where writing up on patients notes comes in use) and stand in the witness box. Yes I did find it scarey before hand as it was my first time in court for any reason. All us nurses and managers had a get together after the hearing for an unoffical 'debriefing' ( OK it was a couple of drinks in the local ) Best of luck, feel free to PM if you want any further information. Thanet.