Kay28

Age 29 10 years experience as an RN And just graduated with my MSN!

Make sure you are familiar with the medications used in an emergency situation on an inpatient psych unit. We use a lot of haldol, Benadryl, Ativan, and Thorazine (either IM or PO) in emergencies. Also review some of your routine psych meds given such as depakote, lithium, zyprexa or latuda. Be aware of your environment at all times, keeping a clear exit to the nearest door. Best of luck!

Inpatient psych: zyprexa, depakote, lithium, trazodone, remeron.

We use a pyxis machine at my hospital and sometimes it wants you to count random meds. For some reason the other night it wanted me to do count every time I took out cogentin. No clue why though.

So it wasn't just my unit?

On my inpatient psych unit we hire both CNAs and mental health workers. Most of the MHWs have a bachelors degree but their job is very similar. They run therapy groups, assist with vitals/adls, and document on the observation board. They also monitor patients that are a 1:1 observation and do whatever other tasks come up throughout the shift.

Maybe "every two hours prn" for q2p?

8s in Massachusetts

Personality disorder patients seem to cause the most chaos on our unit

Its pretty common on my unit to catch someone smoking in their room/bathroom/shower even when informed that this is against unit rules and is a fire hazard. When this occurs we have to obtain an order for a room search and fill out an incident report. Its truly a pain for us.

I work on a locked inpatient psychiatric unit. We can have anywhere from 1:5 to 1:8 on my 3-11 shift. We have to do all of our own admissions, vital signs, and personal care as well.

I should have known to just turn around and go home the other day when I realized I had come into work with my scrub pants on backwards. It was truly the shift from hell.

I picked up an overnight shift last night and had the most vivid dreams when I finally went to bed. It mostly consisted of a patient chasing behind me while I was driving my car around the city. I just kept driving and driving, with the guy a few inches behind me the whole time.

I work inpatient psych and some of my manic patients can be so hyper verbal and tangential you wouldn't believe it! Thankfully my coworkers are pretty good about rescuing each other from these situations.

All home meds at my hospital get sent to be stored in the pharmacy. We only count the narcotics, then just have to list the names of the others. After discharge pts pick up the meds from pharmacy.