AB_manda

I am in Canada and have a bachelors degree in psychiatric nursing. I have worked child and adolescent psych for going on 10 years. My unit is an 8 bed crisis stabilization unit, it is acute, busy, and for the most part a revolving door. We see kids from ages 5-17, average is probably 14-15ish. I have been assaulted numerous times, mostly by drug induced psychotic patients or lower cognition patients. Lots of littles that are ODD like to kick it up too but they are pretty manageable. We have access to security and 3 “hold/safe” rooms that the door lock, we also have the use of chemical and physical restraints if needed but that’s few and far between. We (as the nurses) run group therapy, individual therapy as well as some family stuff. We see lots of borderline traits as well coming through but usually for a quick in and out. Average stay for us is a week! I love what I do and my amazing coworkers make it a great place to work (we are only 10 regular staff nurses so we are super close). The thing with kids is they are totally malleable, eager to learn, and there is so much hope for change still there, I found with adults that was much harder to find. Lots of people have come and gone on our unit over the years, it definitely is a lot more work on our unit compared to adults but if you are good and like it you will stay forever ☺️ Also here if we have a kid in restraints or in seclusion they are on constant observation so we have eyes on them all the time! They usually have 1-1 staff assigned and are never out of eyes of nurses

Hi! I am a registered psychiatric nurse in Alberta, I have my Bachelor of Science in Psychiatric Nursing and work on an acute child and adolescent inpatient unit. We have Mostly psych nurses (most of them are diploma psych nurses, only 2 of us have the bachelors degree) on staff but do have a few RNs and LPNs, RNS here can work on any of the psych units without any extra education, experience definitely helps. I find it's really nice to have all the skills of each group as we do lots of injections, iv care/therapy, wound dressings, med therapy, individual, family and group therapy. I took my training in MB and am originally from SK and those provinces also have RNs working in psych!

I am an RPN with my 4 year Bachelor of Science in Psychiatric Nursing from Brandon University in MB, within 2 years the AB RPN program will become the degree program which is a 4 year course. Many of the jobs for RPN's are on designated psych units, many other areas require a Bachelor's Degree. I have worked adult, geriatric and child psych but also have recently worked with Home Care in Red Deer. I was the first psych nurse they ever hired, however I was told without the degree I would not have been hired as it is a requirement for the position. A few girls I know are currently doing the bridge program through U of A to get their RN and they are finding the theory component of the classes difficult. One girl is doing most of it distance ED through Athabasca U and just taking practicum courses in Edmonton. What I find crazy is that when I looked at doing the bridge program even with the degree in psych nursing they still want me to take the 2 year bridge course when in reality it is about 4 courses and 3 practicums that i am missing. They will not let you do it back to back you have to wait to do the practicums with your assigned year of students. Money grab in my opinion, if you can have more nurses on the floor in 6 months vs 2 yrs why wouldn't you? However....I am not going to take it as I find there are many doors open for me having the degree in psych nursing, my colleagues who only have the 2 yr diploma find otherwise.

I am an RPN in Alberta and I have the Bachelors of Science in Psychiatric nursing, it is a 4 year degree program that I took out of Brandon University in MB. From what we were told during school is that all the psych nursing programs will be switching to a 4 year BScPN program in the next few years. On our psych units at my hospital I would say 95% of the nurses are Psych nurses, rarely are there RN's. Now all we need is to be able to work in Eastern Canada and life would be peachy keen.