Karine2

i'm a first year nursing student and am interested in going into psych nursing in the future htough not with adults; i'd like to get into the oediatrics area. however i have some personal experience with mental health issues and have been hospitalized on a pyshiatric unit in my past for severe depression and a couple other issues and thus with all of the above combined i have a great interest in the goings-on of these units. (this was just to give you a bit of background). i have a friend who was hospitalized for depression (w/ a history of past and current-at-the-time history of cutting), addiction and an unstable eating disorder back in october. so she was in pretty rough shape emotionally but had agreed with her doctor to be admitted. i don't know exactly how long she had been in the hospital that time (she'd had a series of admissions last fall) but somehow a staff member had found a razor blade in a sock of hers and it it all came about that she was to leave the unit. two security guards came to her room as she was packing up her stuff and were rather rough with her words and starting grabbing her things as she was packing them into her bags. she falied her arms a bit in an attempt to get her things back to put in her bag and for some reason the security guards took this as some sort of threat/resistance and proceeded to grab her by her arms and pummel her and beat her up,:uhoh21: calling her derogatory names. while this was going on someone called the police and a police officer showed up, and my friend got charged with concealment of a weapon (razor blade in a sock) and i think assault. she got taken downstairs to the cop car and to jail and throughout the process was continued to be handled very roughly and called names :stone by the officer. when she was taken before the crown ____ (i'm not sure what it's called), he couldn't believe it (he actually told her that)and immediately dismissed all charges against her and she was free to go. my friend had a picture taken of her laying out, showing her face, arms and legs and they were covered in bruises. i was completely shocked :uhoh21: when i first saw the picture. i'd had no idea what had happened to her when i first saw it. i couldn't believe it. those security guards had no right to do that to her and never have the right to do that to anyone under any circumstances, that is assault/battery/abuse!! and i also can't believe they would actually charge her for the razor blade. i'm sure i'd be really surprised at the assortment of things the staff on psychiatric units find in the possession of patients that they have in their belongings with either the intent to hurt themselves with or have used in the past to hurt themselves and just have a "need" to have with them to feel "safe" (you may have to have some education/knowledge of mental health issues to get that last part). so a razor blade isn't a shocker. in my opinion i totally think my friend has the grounds to sue. we've had a story on the news in my city in the last year of someone who sued a couple of cops for abuse and the pictures were released to the media and he just had a few bruises on his face. like 1/8 of what my friend's phots portray. yes, i'm sure she was fighting back when she was grabbed by the guards and pummeld but who wouldn't in such a situation?? it's instinct. plus she has been abused :sofahider in the past. i'm just wondering what other people think??? my friend wants me to help her in making a decision. karine

i'm a first year nursing student and am interested in going into psych nursing in the future htough not with adults; i'd like to get into the oediatrics area. however i have some personal experience with mental health issues and have been hospitalized on a pyshiatric unit in my past for severe depression and a couple other issues and thus with all of the above combined i have a great interest in the goings-on of these units. (this was just to give you a bit of background). i have a friend who was hospitalized for depression (w/ a history of past and current-at-the-time history of cutting), addiction and an unstable eating disorder back in october. so she was in pretty rough shape emotionally but had agreed with her doctor to be admitted. i don't know exactly how long she had been in the hospital that time (she'd had a series of admissions last fall) but somehow a staff member had found a razor blade in a sock of hers and it it all came about that she was to leave the unit. two security guards came to her room as she was packing up her stuff and were rather rough with her words and starting grabbing her things as she was packing them into her bags. she falied her arms a bit in an attempt to get her things back to put in her bag and for some reason the security guards took this as some sort of threat/resistance and proceeded to grab her by her arms and pummel her and beat her up,:uhoh21: calling her derogatory names. while this was going on someone called the police and a police officer showed up, and my friend got charged with concealment of a weapon (razor blade in a sock) and i think assault. she got taken downstairs to the cop car and to jail and throughout the process was continued to be handled very roughly and called names :stone by the officer. when she was taken before the crown ____ (i'm not sure what it's called), he couldn't believe it (he actually told her that)and immediately dismissed all charges against her and she was free to go. my friend had a picture taken of her laying out, showing her face, arms and legs and they were covered in bruises. i was completely shocked :uhoh21: when i first saw the picture. i'd had no idea what had happened to her when i first saw it. i couldn't believe it. those security guards had no right to do that to her and never have the right to do that to anyone under any circumstances, that is assault/battery/abuse!! and i also can't believe they would actually charge her for the razor blade. i'm sure i'd be really surprised at the assortment of things the staff on psychiatric units find in the possession of patients that they have in their belongings with either the intent to hurt themselves with or have used in the past to hurt themselves and just have a "need" to have with them to feel "safe" (you may have to have some education/knowledge of mental health issues to get that last part). so a razor blade isn't a shocker. in my opinion i totally think my friend has the grounds to sue. we've had a story on the news in my city in the last year of someone who sued a couple of cops for abuse and the pictures were released to the media and he just had a few bruises on his face. like 1/8 of what my friend's phots portray. yes, i'm sure she was fighting back when she was grabbed by the guards and pummeld but who wouldn't in such a situation?? it's instinct. plus she has been abused :sofahider in the past. i'm just wondering what other people think??? my friend wants me to help her in making a decision. karine

i have struggled with depression i think since actually grade three but wasn't diagnosed with depression until age 12 and since then i have struggled with chronic and severe depression with some ups and some really really downs including hospitalizations. included in there is an eating disorder that started at age 11 of which i am still dealing with today and i'm now 26. i just started nursing school in september and am struggling emotionally and eating disorder-wise. everything jsut feels so overwhelming and like so much and i'm not even in clinical yet, that's not til next semester so when i think of next semester i'm overcome by anxiety. but i am on meds and see a therapist weekly and go into an ed unit on the weekends for help with that. i'm just worried that even though nursing is what i always wanted to do, that maybe it or i'm not cut out for it because of my depression and how my mind tends to think. i've wondered too that maybe i've been reading the stories on here too much and it has just scared me?? it's just got me thinking that nursing maybe is too stressful for me and too hard. but this thread has helped to reassure me a little bit. i would just have to find my nice. my interest areas are pediatric mental health or pediatric oncology and i think i could do those. i plan on staying far far away from the er, medical surg and those ones. i just don't know what's going to get me through the rest of this year. i'm also in a cbl program and i'm not liking it. karine2

thanks for your replies. my instructor has yet to reply to me. it's getting really frustrating. i have talked to the other student. she went in right after me and was the last one to have her evaluation. our instructor actually kept calling her by my name at the beginning of her eval and the other girl had to keep correcting her. after i first spoke to the other girl she checked her copy of the written eval she received and my name was at the top of hers but our instructor had actually crossed my name out and wrote this other girl's name, apparently at the eval. tonight i am going to email this other girl with the beginning of the comments of the written copy i have to see if they are the same. this just seems so unethical to me. the comments that were made about my appeareance were just lame, like she asked if i had lightened my hair and said that i didn't wear very much makeup did i. like what is the relevance of that? anyway, hopefully i will hear from her soon. the following day after this happened i did go and speak to a coordinator or something like that of the nursing program and said what had happened and this other lady said she would speak to my instructor and that she was sure i would be hearing from my lab instructor anyways. so far though, nothing. karine2

i just need to vent about this. i had my first lab evaluation yesterday for my first nursing course. i went in and my instructor handed me her evaluation sheet with her written comments. she then went through and read then commented further on some points here and there. seemed perfectly normal. she made some other comments to me which i don't think were sppropraite which i will get to in a moment. at the end i had to sign her copy of the evaluation which i did right in front of her of course and she saw me sign my name. what is the big deal is later on in the afternoon i was takin gout the sheet and i noticed the name written at the top of the sheet---it was not mine!!! there was one girl left in my class to have her evaluation who went in right after me and this was her evaluation. all those comments my instructor went through and such was for this other student, she didn't even know who i was! and i also think this is a major breach of confidentiality, foip, yuou name it. so i don'y even know my eval. i have emailed my instrucotr about this (yesterday) and she has yet to respond, and it's been a day now. my instructor also made comments on my appearance, my hair, my makeup, like what is the relevance of this to lab? i am just pissed off. any opinions on how i should handle this?

i just began nursing school a month ago and my whole nursing program uses context-based learning and i was like you, wondering how the heck it was all going to work and was thinking about all my past experiences of group work, how there was always someone who slacked off and someone who would end up doing most of the work. but that's not how it's turned out to be at all. i have 12 people in my nursing 190 class where the cbl is used and we all do/research the "scenarios" together and come up with the questions about what we need/want to know about the scenario. we make sure we have 12 headings so there is one for each of us to go and research on our own. this is where the self-directed learning component comes in. we then bring our research back to the class, everyone gets a copy of our assignment and we present our findings to the class. it's important for everyone to thoroughly research everything we were assigned because we will be tested on it, so that is the motivation for everyone to do their best because it won't hurt only them but everyone and vice versa. i had my first cbl nursing midterm last week and what you needed to study was the "core concept map" which showed all the topics, like growth and development of the people in the scenarios, nursing practice, sociology topics, nursing profession etc. and so on, information from the nursing lab. you weren't so much tested straight forwardly about the info but it's application of the information. it's actually quite difficult to prepare for these exams. my instructor refers to them as "written learning experiences" rather than tests. we haven't gotten our marks back yet and i'm really curious to see how i did. she has said that people often have a hard time getting these first marks back becasue so many people who come to nursing are used to being straight-a students and then they don't get those marks right off. any more comments about cbl, especially from students further on in it??? like tips on the exams??? :rotfl:

i just found out today from my tutorial instructor that when we begin our clinical in janurary that we will be using latex gloves and i was surprised. i didn't think facilities used them anymore becuase of people's possibility of being allergic. my dad is an occupational health and safety officer for my city's ems and becuase of his actions the whole ems no longer used latex and so i just assumed no one did. i hope i don't have a reaction.

okay, i know this is a bit of a sticky issue. i am really going out on a limb here but i feel so alone and i"m hoping to connect with anyone else out there who might be experiencing the same or something similar. i'm just wondering if there are other nurses who struggle with managing an eating disorder as well as working with a nurse. if they've had a nursing supervisor make comments to them or even clinical instructors in nursing school say anything to them and how they have dealt with that situation. (i'm currently just in nursing school right now, and haven't had anyone say anything to me but we were learning to take bps last week and my lab instructor was using me to show something to me and a my partner and couldn't get my bp). did you make sure you were fully in recovery before getting a job after graduation?? do find that the medical/nursing environment encourages you to be healthy or do you find it as more of a trigger to you? have you had any patients make comments to you?? really i'm just looking for anyone to say anything about their experience(s). and people's opinions.

i have a unique perspective on this issue in that iahve both sides. i have been hospitalized on a medical unit after making a suicide attempt and i am now a nursing student. i spent many hours in the er before i was admitted to a unit and the nurse that i dealt with in the er was extremely hostile to me and dsownright rude and acted really ain appropriately to me. i was not being hostile or rude in any way. i was extremely upset and crying and felt physically horrible and could have used some empathy and support in the situation i was in. instead i merely got a guard, who psent hours watching me as i got sick and dizzy and watched me as i fell out of my bed. empathy is one of the key skills nurses are supposed to have and use in their communicative interpersonal relations with patients and apparental this nurse needs a review of that. i can understand where some nurses come from in their hostility towards suicide patients especially if they are hostile but we really need to think about where they are coming from. we need to think what is going on their life theat made them feel so desparate that they felt this was the only thing left for them to do. they need empathy and understanding. this may not get through to them all, some are not at that point, but many are. patients who are adults and who are medically unstable due to whatever method they used in their attempt should have a guard appointed to them until they are out of danger. this i do agree with. it is not the job of nurses to keep their eye on pateints in this way.

thank you so much for your input! since i posted i found two good articles online through my school's website, but they are much much more owrd than your simple explanation, well at least one of them is, but your explanation really helped to me to grasp the core concept of it all so it will be helpful to me as i read these two articles and pick points out for my assignment. my tutorial instructor hadn't even heard of carper's!!! and this is for her class! karine

hey this is my first time posting!!! sooo glad i found this site and can't wait til i got a minute to read through the intersting posts i see! but i'm running on desparate fumes here working on an assignment and need to know a good explantion/defintion of what carper's ways of knowing (personal, empirical, aesthetic, ehtical) are for an assignemtn i'm doing this weekend. i have found alot of article abstracts online but then you need to buy the full text which of course i cannot do so thought i'd check with you guys. anyone????