I'm a very new RN (just licensed last week) and I am currently applying for psych positions at the large metropolitan hospital I am currently working at as a nursing attendant.
I feel I have found my niche in psych. I love taking the time to sit down to talk to my patients, to find out exactly what is going on, and working with them to come up with solutions. I also find psych fascinating and truly enjoy studying it and working with the patients (most of the time).
I feel like this may be a silly question to ask, but I feel like I need some advice from some experienced nurses here.
I had a pretty wrenched day at work today on a one to one observation.
I was sitting with a surprisingly strong 90 year old women who was experiencing altered mental status due to a UTI. I could sit and write about all the things that went wrong within that 8 hour shift all night but I will try to keep it brief.
She tried to lock herself in the bathroom multiple times
She punched me in the chest a few times times
She slapped me
She screamed quite a few times (loud enough to make people come running)
She tried to pull her IV out 5-6 times
She kept walking over to the other side of the room to bother her roommate (insisting on tucking her in at one point) . . .
there were quite a few other issues but this is already getting long.
and she calmed that she was doing all this because GOD told her to.
Looking at all this typed up makes it seem like I may be a bit dense for letting her hit me so many times, but I was just trying to do my best to keep her safe (since she refused to sit down for much of the day and was a major fall risk)
Anyway. What I am trying to get at here is that after about 4.5-5 hours of this it all started getting to me. I started getting really annoyed and upset with the situation. I tried redirecting her and a few other techniques to get her to calm down but nothing was working.
I guess I'm just sitting here wondering (after days like today) if I should even be going into the psych field. I like to think my experience with patients will be different as a nurse because you can walk away from a conversation if its not productive, or you or the patient need to cool off and re-group.
So do you guys get frustrated with your psych patients sometimes?
Can you still be a good psych nurse if the patients actions upset/frustrate you sometimes?
Please don't sugar coat this, I would really like to know what you all think.
