Psych Nurse ="not a REAL nurse"?

ddpp94803 · Apr 7, 2006

ddpp94803 · Apr 7, 2006

Im a Psych nurse.... and its real nursing , before that i was an Er and Icu nurse....Psych Nurses have a bad Rep...but so do many of our patients

ddpp94803 · Apr 7, 2006

Im a Psych nurse.... and its real nursing , before that i was an Er and Icu nurse....Psych Nurses have a bad Rep...but so do many of our patients, caring and protecting them is quite a job

Toothbrushx2 · Apr 7, 2006

I am a psych nurse! Yes we are real nurses.

:balloons:

msmona · Apr 7, 2006

This bothered me too, thanks for puuting it so gracefully into words.

It's not crap. They are suffering. If they are inpatient, they are in serious trouble. In fact, some may be in such serious psychological pain that they perceive their existance does depend on getting their med. You wouldn't call it crap if a patient in med/surg was wanting his pain meds as ordered every 4 to 6 hours would you? Sure, some may be pain in the butt personality disorder patients, but still, they did not choose to be this way.
Can you tell I'm thinking about doing psych someday? I wish there was some sort of virtual reality device that could be worn by students to experience hallucinations or other psych symptoms. It is by the grace of god or chance or happenstance that you and I are not in a psych hospital with a painful illness. I know you may have made the above statement off the cuff, but this bothered me.

Gabie Baby · Apr 8, 2006

Boy, is that a stupid thing to say or what?

Of course Psych nurses are real nurses.

rntraveler · Apr 9, 2006

A psych nurse needs all the skills that a med-surg nurse does because it's much harder to assess all the symptoms. Our pt often have stopped taking their meds and have all kinds of medical illnesses. High blood pressure and diabetes are big ones. you have to decide which are valid complaints and which are somatic with no basis. For instance,the "migraine" sufferer with no photophobia who is laughing and talking with peers. We get a lot of med-seekers,too. And the psychiatrists can't tell all of the time which are which. i remember one pt who had not been in hosp for several years and kept telling the doc she needed more meds. he decided she was med-seeking and cut her off them all. Well! Soon she had a Schizophrenic break-every textbook symptom. and the older man who was brought in by his landlady,just completely out of it and was diagnosed with diabetes. With some diabetic teaching and his blood sugar under control he was able to go back home and be functional again. I could tell you more stories but you get the picture!

mamabear · Apr 10, 2006

I've been a psych nurse for 20 years, and it's about as real as anything can get. (I also work midnights only, so sometimes I've been "double zapped" for not being a real nurse and working a shift where I don't do anything!)

Doubledee · Apr 11, 2006

My goodness! We might as well say nurse managers, RNACs, Insurance nurses, Occupational Health Nurses and legal consultants aren't real nurses. It was the variety of options that attracted me to nursing.

I may not work as a psych nurse but phyche is very much a part of my life as an LTC supervisor.

Of course, we really never get past junior high, do we?

We work in different environments but we are all nurses. Ain't it great?

JessicRN · Apr 11, 2006

Gee, I guess that means I'm not a "real" nurse when I start the IV on a patient that has massive blood loss from a self-inflicted cut, or when I tell the psychiatrist that the mental health patient I'm caring for is exhibiting side effects from the medication he is taking. What about the interactions between the psych meds and many of the antibiotics that are routinely prescribed by medical MD's? Nope, I don't guess I'm a REAL nurse at all, even though RN is after my name!! lol

good for you at my place that pt would come directly to the Main ER whereby we would do the entire workup then when the pt was medically cleared and not drunk then they will see him

docpsychrn · Apr 15, 2006

being a psych nurse for over 15 years, i know that i am a "real" nurse. worked in a maximum security forensic hospital and now in the prison system. i can even start iv's...lol there are alot of cms nurses that think i am not a "real" nurse, but i haven't ever seen them try to do my job! i love what i do and i do it well. hooray for psych nurses and to the other nurses that are our sisters/brothers in the medical field!

batgirl23 · Apr 20, 2006

first post. i was reading this thread and thought i would put in my 2 cents. i have been a psych nurse for almost 20 years with absolutely no regrets. not a real nurse? in my opinion, psych nursing is real nursing. the cornerstone of all nursing is the therapeutic relationship which is our "skill set" in psych. if you are doing real nursing (providing comfort, warmth, empathy, respect, understanding, support, empowerment, advocacy...) then, in whatever specialty, you are doing psych nursing.

:nurse:

for all you students and new grads thinking about psych as a career... do it!! a wise faculty advisor told me in my final year that the technical skills / technology can be learned or re-learned at any time - the skills you learn in psych nursing are invaluable and will always be relevant wherever you go in nursing or in life. i have never forgotten that and i have found it to be true.