craftirn

I forgot to mention career paths without nursing. Mental health tech--they usually need a BS in Psych or experience social work-- out pt services include group homes that are always looking for people, I don't know what experience they need. Occupational Therapy/ Recreational therapy-- to be the therapist you need a college degree, but they look for techs in that area also and all psych units have them These are ways to try out the field, There are also program directors and coordinators. I'm sure there are more, but a lot in the put patient field.

My hospital is not a teaching hospital, but we do get students--nursing students. Due to HIPPA I doubt they would allow high school students into a psychiatric unit. Having worked in a psyc unit for 20 yrs I can tell you she would need to have a strong Med-Surg background. Most of our pts have mild to severe medical problems and when the focus is on psychiatric and suddenly you need to pull knowledge out of the hat you haven't used in years, that takes experience. Most units require at least a few years with medical before specializing. The only field I know that takes "green" nursing students is OB as they like to train them without "bad" habits already, but that was years ago too.

Our medically cleared get UDS and BAL prior to coming to the unit from the ER. Suffice it to say that does not medically CLEAR anyone and there are many problems with getting medical doctors down to our unit in a timely manner. Unless it is an obvious medical problem, it is missed until we pick it up on teh nursing assessment.