phil evans

Hi leading on from last reply, violence on a psych ward is endemic, often regardless as to how much meds you use, but often or not the violence does not come from the genuinely psychotic patient it comes from the axis 2 patient -the personalilty disorder, this group of patients woulod make up at least 25 plus % of any psych ward clientele, anti-social maladaptive behviours with a big dose of entitlement and narracissism, make for a firey time when you the nurse have to limit set there bad behaviours on the ward, and when you do they go and cut themselves or worse, in response, and it how the nurse deals with this behaviour that makes or breaks the nurse for the energy expended when dealing with this group of patients, would suck the life out a dead rabbit.and makes the nurse head toward burnout alot quicker than the genuinely psychotic patient, and then of course as the patient mix changes as it does you can end up with more than half the ward axis 2 , and that makes for a hard time, - if you can learn to deal this this lot -you can deal with anything psych nursing in australia ,is the most violent job in australia.

hi mike. what is a CNA, ? im from ozzy and dont know the term but i work in psych, done so for about 13 years now, i did some general at the begining, but left it due to the *****ing between the other nurses, ( apoligies to general nurses ) , psych is my cup of tea, more relaxed, its not task orientated stuff like a general nurse robot, often the $ is better, and the interpersonal skills you learn dealing with emotional tradegy at its most worst, can be transplanted into other jobs when you decide to leave and we need the world wide more males in psych mike, but bear in mind -in psych you will cure no -one , often there will be so many repeat admissions, and you will see them slowly get worse mentally and physically as the years goes by, psych nursing is a job done with your gut, the relationships you forge with your paitents, and a sound knowledge knowledge of pathology and meds, go to the psych wards and give it a go, try it for 6 months, and then you will know, but if you want to spend your life do tpr bp and temp hourly turns and washing and wiping, go and enrol with the general nurses, -it is horses for course, and you may like general stuff many do and the job ( although not my cup of tea ) is satisfying to many and many make a good carear out of it but try psych so much diverstiy see you