Hi all! During covid19 my hospital received funding from the government to cross train RNs to other units in case of a surge. Mostly it's been Med/Surg, PACU, OR training to ICU and Stepdown. I've been training a lot of people! Our manager asked who from Stepdown wants to train in ICU and picked a few people who have been in Stepdown for a while and were interested (not me!).
I've been going to inpatient psych to help with covid pts. I like it! Their manager asked me to cross train. I'm excited to train but my coworkers are laughing at me and about how everyone's going to ICU and I "got sent to Psych". As if ICU is superior. They're asking why I want to go there, it's no skills, "why do I want to deal with those people", it's just babysitting.
Most don't know I have a psych issue so it's insulting on a double level, to me personally and to psych nursing in general. Psych nurses are amazing and help people in need of compassion as well as treatment. I like seeing people go from hallucinating, depressed etc get better with meds and therapy (although I know it's not always butterflies and rainbows!) It gets me down to see my patients cycle through substance use, withdrawal, go out and drink/do drugs, come back, etc. without addressing the root of the problem. Has anyone faced this situation and what can we do to combat it? All areas of nursing are important
Let those mean girls roll off your back. Psych is incredible work and your skills will be desperately needed (with the increased infection control concerns). As Taylor Swift said— Haters gonna hate. I’m gonna shake shake shake it off!
Meh, dont let it bother you. It seems like every area of nursing correlates to people's personality. ICU seems to be for people who have horrible people skills and generally not pleasant to be around (most, not all), MS/Stepdown for people who are more personable (they have their bitter people too) etc. Just keep doing what makes you happy.
23 hours ago, klone said:
Um, no.
" ICU seems to be for people who have horrible people skills and generally not pleasant to be around" is kind of an ironic thing to say in a thread that includes "stop hating" on nurses because of a specialty.
" ICU seems to be for people who have horrible people skills and generally not pleasant to be around" is kind of an ironic thing to say in a thread that includes "stop hating" on nurses because of a specialty.
OK, I admit I should not have made such a broad generalization. At my old job this was the case. At my current job it is not the case.
Specializes in Psych, Corrections, Med-Surg, Ambulatory.
On 5/6/2020 at 12:42 PM, Salisburysteak said:
Bless you for doing Psych! That is one area I cannot do. This is why nurses are needed everywhere. One specialty is not better than another.
As a previous poster has stated--it is their problem not yours.
I worked with a nurse awhile ago in SNF, he was to put it nicely not a good fit, would miss labs, not medicate elevated BPs, etc. I saw him a few years later working at one of the Behavioral Health facilities and, he was a changed nurse! He wss great with the patients and I coud tell the patients trusted him. He had found his niche! So what I am getting at is tht you have found an area of nursing that maybe your niche! Go for it! ?
That's great that he was able to interact therapeutically with patients. But even psych patients have elevated BPs, need labs, etc. Unfortunately, psych attracts a lot of nurses who give themselves airs about not being "task-oriented", but there are still "tasks" that need to be performed.
There are several reasons that psych is disparaged. One certainly is that people feel uncomfortable interacting with people who have mental health problems. Just like people who disparage nurses in general are likely to be nursing school flunk-outs, I believe when people disparage psych, they might have barely squeaked through that rotation in nursing school.
I also think Emergent has it pegged correctly. There is a lot of subjectivity and in many psych locations, the personnel are not held to the same standard they would be elsewhere. Unfortunately, psych does attract people who don't do well with accountability. That places an extra burden on those who take their work and their patients seriously.
I, too, hate the idea of a nursing hierarchy where some specialities are deemed more important than others. I've worked several specialities in my career and each requires its own specific skill set. And every patient deserves conscientious care as much as every other patient.
I love psych, it suits me. Most of my experience is with the medical side of nursing but I hated doing all of the medical stuff. I used to be an oncology medsurg nurse. Psych even has a medical side to it but not like the medsurgey jobs that are laden with medical task. I don't care if people look down on what I do or see it as inferior.
Last year I got hired as an in house float nurse and was SO very surprised to find out how much I liked working the Psych ward.
I have always been a fan of cognitive behavioral theory and "owning" our own roles in life issues and when I was younger worked as an assistant in two residential facilities for children and learned of "milieu therapy." Milieu therapy means, basically, respond appropriately to whatever the resident/client/patient's reactions are in order for them to see what "appropriate" is. I see them as people suffering and I also see them as "us" in the worst situations of our lives. I'm not an enabler at all and I really appreciate how working in psych has helped me function outside of the clinical setting with people who are not necessarily appropriate with me, (meaning how well it helped me use boundaries.)
Specializes in LTC, assisted living, med-surg, psych.
Actually, it's true that some people can "see" numbers or letters in color and taste colors and words. Others can smell letters or numbers. It's called synesthesia, and I have it. I didn't even know there was a scientific name for what I experience until I was in my mid-40s; I certainly didn't tell anyone about it because I was afraid people would think I was weird. (Well, they think I'm weird anyway, so that's no biggie.) But I thought I was weird, and it took a long time even after I was diagnosed for me to be comfortable sharing. Now I don't care who knows about it, in fact I find it fascinating.
CommunityRNBSN, BSN, RN
928 Posts
Let those mean girls roll off your back. Psych is incredible work and your skills will be desperately needed (with the increased infection control concerns). As Taylor Swift said— Haters gonna hate. I’m gonna shake shake shake it off!