JeromeG1234

CharlieRN, I think that you missed the point of my post, which was that after a few med/surg situations in which I had to ask other nurses for help (which, I might add, they gladly gave), my skills improved and I now know what to do. I am hardly the weakest link in my nursing team and am offended by your assumption that such is the case. You have posted yourself that medically compromised patients aren't generally admitted to psychiatric hospitals, so it would seem logical to assume that you are aware that med/surg emergencies (codes, etc.) issues are not every day occurrences.

I'm also a recent graduate (May '04), and I went right into psych on an acute adult with no med/surg experience. It has not been an issue. There are times when medical issues come up and I feel inept, but there are always other nurses around to help that DO know what to do, and with time I've gotten better at dealing with these situations as well. Nursing school gives you the basic foundation you need to handle the issues that will come up.

I think that a good first step would be to get a job as a psychiatric technician (psych tech) in a psychiatric hospital; this is psychiatry's equivalent to a nurse's aid, and the hospital would most likely provide whatever training you would need. You would then get to work closely with psychiatric nurses (you would be part of the nursing staff), and be better able to make a decision. To answer your questions, NO, you do not need a master's degree to be a psychiatric nurse! A basic RN is all that you need and, in fact, LPN's can and do work in psychiatric hospitals as well. They can do all of the tasks that don't require the assessment skills of an RN; for example, they may pass medications and do vital signs, etc., but probably wouldn't be able to do admissions or discharges, which require a nursing assessment. To answer your last question, there is no nursing program that allows you to ONLY train in psychiatry. You have to make it through nursing school as a whole, and as has been said in some other threads here, it is important to know that a psychiatric nurse is expected to know how to perform whatever nursing tasks come up with his or her patients (e.g., if your patient needed a catheter, you would be expected to know how to insert it). Hope this helps!

I'm a new psychiatric RN myself, working on an acute adult unit, and over the last few months I've learned that the most important skill for a psychiatric nurse to have is the ability to remain calm amid total chaos. If the staff loses it too, it's really over. Anyway, that's my $0.02 :)