Psych-n-Stuff

16 bed locked acute unit. Ratio is 5 patients per nurse, minimum 3 nurses per shift. There is also an intermediate unit, which is reserved for substance abuse detox, for the most part. Have a lot of admissions and discharges at times and this adds to acuity level.

There is no area of nursing where you won't find patients with the same game, different setting. Psych patients, who truly need assistance, may not be the majority, but they need the assistance of knowledgeable and compassionate psychiatric nurses. I like psych, just like I liked burns -- it takes a little extra something to care for patients who have a lot going against them and I want them to know that someone cares in a sometimes very uncaring, painful and dismissive world. Takes no more effort to smile and listen than it does to smile and empty a bed pan -- just has to be something you want to do. Hope you find your place, where your talents and strengths will shine!

Great post!! Thanks!

From my understanding and experience in the nursing field, civility and lack thereof is not about levels of training, I believe that it has more to do with the ways that humans with varying degrees of training/opportunities treat one another. An MD, RN, LVN, BSN , CNA or whatever title one has achieved does not entitle any individual to be disrespectful, dismissive, rude, or any other behavior or verbal expression one can think of. A degree earned is about skills and scopes of practice, not about the way one may interact with another. It's unfortunate that there is a belief that one cog in any operating system is more important than any other. All the cogs must be in place for the system to operate efficiently...it can limp along awhile without a certain part, but it can never meets its full potential and reason for existence. Training and higher education are to be admired, but are no reason for treating one's fellow man/woman, whether they are a patient or co-worker or a person that passes one on the street, with superiority, disrespect, unkindness and without charity and humility? We all exist on different planes, with different opportunities and abilities to become what we may; the only similarity that everyone possesses is their humanity and its resulting responsibilities. Great article and opportunity to discuss an abnormally normal situation -- incivility, bullying, man's/woman's inhumanity towards man/woman (and every combination thereof).