Psych nursing at the VA Medical Centers

gypsy26 · Jul 1, 2016

I've worked in several VAs. VAs are as diverse as private sector hospitals. One VA I remember had horrible staffing on the psych unit and the patients were acutely psychotic, the ratios were roughly 9:1 and on the medicine floors it was 6:1. The VA I work at currently is much better, the entire unit is only 10 beds and they try to keep the patient to nurse ratio at 4:1. As a whole, it highly depends on the VA and the management.

elkpark · Jul 1, 2016

I worked in psych at a VA many years ago, and it wasn't significantly different from the community hospital psych units on which I've worked over the years. One difference that I did see was that we got a fair number of admissions of vets that were basically just respite care for family members (not any acute need on the part of the client). Those admissions usually happened in the evenings; the families knew that, if they brought their vet family member to the hospital during the day, he would be evaluated by psych and not admitted, so they would bring them to the ED after hours, drop them off, and leave, which left the ED with few options besides admitting the person (I've seen that happen in community hospitals, as well, but a lot less often and with a lot more resistance from the facilities). The VA I was at was a teaching hospital affiliated with the local university medical school, so we had residents and a teaching environment, which was a plus.

EKUGRAD, BSN, MSN, RN, CNS · Jul 3, 2016

When I started at VA Psych, an LPN (Army Combat Medic) that had been there forever told me words of wisdom. He said, "Just remember; they're all trained killers". Other than that, just like any other psych unit.