Kay28

Kay28

Psychiatric nursing

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All Content by Kay28

  1. Age vs Years Nursing

    Age 29 10 years experience as an RN And just graduated with my MSN!
  2. Now THAT'S a lab result

    Mag of 0.7. Alive.
  3. 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 suc...
  4. What are the top 5 medications YOU administer daily?

    Inpatient psych: zyprexa, depakote, lithium, trazodone, remeron.
  5. Having to count Risperidone

    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.
  6. Full Moon

    So it wasn't just my unit?
  7. Can a CNA work in psych?

    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...
  8. Help! What does Q2P & Q4P mean?

    Maybe "every two hours prn" for q2p?
  9. 8-vs-12 hour shifts?

    8s in Massachusetts
  10. Which diagnosis?

    Personality disorder patients seem to cause the most chaos on our unit
  11. Have you ever had a patient smoke in the room?

    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...
  12. POLL: nurse-to-patient ratio

    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.
  13. 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.
  14. Nursing Nightmares

    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 inc...
  15. 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.
  16. Counting ALL home meds on admission

    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.
  17. If You Give a Patient a Cookie

    Printed this out at work. Everyone loved it!
  18. Call Lights

    My favorite part of working on an adult psych unit is........ no call lights! The cords are considered a suicide risk.
  19. I work on an inpatient acute adult psych unit located in a medical hospital. 30 bed unit and I work 1500 to 2330 shift. On my shift I can get anywhere from 5 to 8 patients. One particular horrendous shift I had nine patients. We do get MHWs but they ...
  20. I know that I lost a job a few years ago due to calling out too much during the initial 90 day probationary period. I was hospitalized several times for exacerbation of my schizophrenia symptoms. Even though they were legitimate absences, they didn't...
  21. Has anyone tried team nursing? Opinions?

    I worked in a free standing psych hospital where we did team nursing of sorts. There were six units with 13-26 pts in each unit. We would get one RN who was "charge nurse" and an LPN who was "med nurse". Charge would do admission, discharges, and dea...
  22. How old were you when you started Nursing School?

    18 when I started my RN program
  23. The only test I had to take for the RN position I hold was a pharmacology exam. It was multiple choice for the most part with some dosage calculations thrown in.
  24. IM Ativan

    I've worked inpatient psych and given IM ativan many, many times. Never diluted it before, but I'm curious if others have.
  25. Diagnoses you've seen?

    Marfan's syndrome and neuroleptic malignant syndrome (sp?)