jaycam

All this. I am used to the roles I had to play with my parents, I have a lot of deescalation/non verbal communication training. I learned a lot of how not to wear my emotions on my sleeve. I've taken every CE I could get my grubby little hands on in things like risk assessment and individual psych disorders. The more you know, the better you get.

I'm the RN on a psychosis unit, for about a year now. Before that, I was a nursing assistant in developmental disabilities/home health for about 9 years. I have about a once every three years streak of getting hit. I actually prefer working in psych because they have less access to weapons. Last time I was assualted about 8 months ago now. Patient walked in on us doing forced meds on another patient, had a pretty quick esculation, and I went to cut him off from the other staff who were doing the hold for meds. Ended up grabbing me by my scrubs and was beating me over the head. I had bruises from the left hand to the base of my skull. That's it. The worst part for me was that I don't remember it clearly. What I remember and what was on the video was two different things. I learned a pretty important lesson about psychosis and personal space from it. It was probably the least hurt I had ever been and I put that down to how many people jumped in to stop it.

I went to a CNA program at a local 4-year college. It was a certificate program, 8 weeks, and cost less than that. Students were students, some more studious than others, but the deciding factor wasn't who paid for it. I was the student on a training grant, the one already working in home health for years as a caregiver, and I took it rather seriously since I needed it to get into nursing school. Now I'm a RN, I work in a smaller psych hospital, and I really enjoy my job. Your post comes off as if you fit the more conservative side of the spectrum. Learn to relax just a bit. Take a deep breath and understand other people can make choices. What will you do when it's your patients who want absolutely nothing to do with your sage advice? Everyone is an adult and has their own things going. Learn to occasionally let go and relax. If you don't, nursing school is going to be a special kind of torture. Being able to relax and laugh at the situation is a form of resilience, and every nurse can use a few coping skills that increase their resiliance.

The local summer camps I attend have them on site as well. Most of these camps are out in the middle of national parks. We did have an MI at one of them, that did not require the use of an AED. Even though this camp was closest to civilization, it was still far enough out to justify driving the staffer into the nearest town to meet EMS just to save time for them. I would hate to have seen what would have happened if the woman who had the MI had a more severe situation. I still prefer having the AEDs on site personally, but then again, we also have medical professionals on site as well, ones much more capable than I for out of hospital emergencies, so keeping someone stable while we wait for EMS is less of an issue. We seem to attract a lot of high-level EMTs and military-trained medics for some odd reason for our outings.

They told me in nursing school there were plenty of well paying, 1.0 jobs...

I do love psych nursing.... Adorable little old lady comes in, hissing and spitting mad, calmed down a little by joking about my hair, but still threatening staff members, so we gave meds, which of course went over like a lead balloon. Told her what I was giving her before I gave it, but apparently she was distracted, afterwards she goes: "Whatever you gave me, can I get some more?" thirty minutes later, doing the H&P on her, I'm giving her food, and just chatting with her, asking questions "I know what you're doing... you're trying to get the goods on me... well I ain't talking!... Oooo frosted flakes.... what was that you were saying dear?"

"Just making sure my inner voice gets heard"

"The voices keep telling me to hurt you" Which, hey, at least they told me. :)

It is very different though. Person first labeling is more respectful in general. It is also more personal. Do you go around calling all your diabetic patients "my diabetics" or "bed 2345 is diabetic." I know it can go both ways, but I do believe in person first labels. My mentor for example is male and a nurse, but I refer to him by name, then title, then male only if it's relevant.

The provider I work on introduced themselves to me by saying "The people upstairs hate me, but that's okay because it means I am doing my job right. " Still love them to death most days. I go away on vacation and the next time they see me "Why did you leave us?"

When I was still a student, I was doing med/surg clinicals at a trauma center. My patient had developed pneumonia and was sent for sent down for a thorocentisis. It had taken forever, and they were late for a neb treatment and pain meds. They were super irritable, and my nurse started all her meds, and we were going to leave it at that. I couldn't fight the nagging feeling though that something was out of character for the patient who was normally a sweet mama bear type. So I went back to the room just before planning to check on my other patients. She was coughing up white foam, had dropped the neb. Got them sitting up, grabbed an O2 sat on them (88) and dropped the O2 on them. Called for my nurse as I started listening and found the diminished lung sounds and crackles on the side where the procedure was done. We called a rapid response, I was told to handoff report to the RR team since I had been with her all day. The STAT nurse patted me on the back for catching it that quickly and ushered me out as they brought in the x-ray tech to verify findings.

USA Acute Inpatient Psych, Night shift. Usually 12-17

Bellevue College Nursing @ Bellevue College

A handwritten thank you card goes a long way. I did one for both my preceptor and the nurses, then included a coffee card for the preceptor and made brownies for everyone.

"I think that covers reflex testing"

Actually, there is a subset of humanity that is genetically pre-dispositioned to being awake in nocturnal hours. There is plenty of research out there about it. If you are one of the people who either through conditioning or genetics, happens to be better off on day shift, that's great, but I happen to do better on nights. I would really hate giving up my 3 PM naps. I get cranky and irritable. On a night shift, I still tend to prefer to sleep shifts, so I usually wake around noon, have a snack, go back to sleep. This allows for me, for example, to do things during the mid-day if needed. I usually get home, shower, have breakfast because breakfast for dinner, nap, snack, chores, errands, back to bed for another couple sleep cycles, then up in time for the roommate to be home, dinner, and off to work after being social.

I had a similar issue back in those days. I was working as a nursing assistant/med tech in an assisted living community. These days, I sport a pastel rainbow of unnatural colors, but combo of night shift/liberal area/patient type has made it less of an issue.

I work 11-7:30 5 days a week as a 1.0 I actually kind of like it, but I really just like doing night shift. I spend my nights off reading and school work so I just live on that schedule. I should go to bed soon so I sleep for work, though.

Part of advocating for our patients is doing everything we can to protect them. They don't get the choice of being in our facilities, we do. If you're allergic, that's one thing, but if you're just trying to avoid the shot because it's uncomfortable, you are not upholding your end of the contact. I get sick for a couple days every time I get vaccinated. Still not the flu, which sent me to the ER the last time I got it, years ago.

What I commonly find when people make this statement is that people didn't actually know what their insurance would cover. It may have covered basic things like preventative care for a healthy person, but what about if they found out they had a chronic condition like asthma or diabetes or had a kid, or injured badly. They would then find out it wasn't perfectly fine. That they could lose their insurance because they were too sick, or it didn't really cover anything else. I had a friend who broke her ankle in a mole burrow one night. She had insurance, but she still ended up with over 10k in bills because her insurance wouldn't cover the majority of the treatment she needed for it. Follow that up with the hospital that treated her was unable to provide her with charity care, even though she met their financial thresholds because she had insurance. She got screwed heavily by the "My insurance was just fine"

I've charged once in my first month at my first job, but it was in my job description and I was warned it could happen. While it's not comfortable, I was given help and resources, and even a bit of training. We use a lot of LPNs and NAs, sometimes we only have one RN, or if we have two, one is per deim or agency. Know your resources, reach out for help. I had two NAs who had worked at the facility a long time and knew what the charge nurse needed from them, so they were prepared to help remind me of why I needed those things. They knew were I could find paperwork I needed. The house charge was there so that I could call them if I needed help. They want you to succeed at it.

We can already do that. That's why I have insurance from Tennesse while living in WA.

My prescription insurance sucks with my new employer plan, but I sent my prescriptions to Target and got them cheaper that way. Inhaler included. I'm am nowhere near the point that I would begrudge people getting basic needs healthcare taken care of just because it made mine more expensive because I have been on the end of this they are at. Perhaps you have forgotten that since you have inhalers, you could easily be one of those people who can't get insurance if anything ever happened to your employer plan? Perhaps you really think the insurance companies would roll back now that they have moved forward. That is naive thinking. They won't go back, even if we did repeal, but we'd have lots of kids hitting lifetime caps again. Lots of people losing insurance because they found out they were diabetic during the ACA days. A lot of mildly sick people becoming very sick.

If it wasn't for the ACA, I would have never made it through nursing school. I am an ACA success story, having gone from unemployment with no insurance, full-time school, eventually gaining access to Medicaid through being in a state that accepted the expansion. You can read more about my story in the post I'll link here. I have pre-existing conditions, but I made it through nursing school, and now I am a nurse with an employer-based insurance plan. I have gotten myself up and out of poverty because I was able to maintain a baseline of healthcare while in school. https://allnurses.com/nursing-activism-healthcare/why-i-cannot-984481.html

I seriously swear by my diva cup. I have horribly unpredictable bleeding that can suddenly pick up, but it has really reduced any "accidents." Even during heavy moments, it can last me six hours.