do you talk about work?

Yep, altho I would never name names, I share the funny, strange, tragic maddening , and downright crazy daily happenings in my work with my husband of 35 years. After all, he helped me so much with my studies, he is part of my job!

When my family asks "how was your day?", it's not out of politeness. They REALLY want to know. I give them the highlights.

At first I used to tell my wife so much about the in's and out's of a general mental health ward.

9 years later, generally only the funny stuff.

Recently one of my patients was feeding eels in a stream close to the unit, a duck kept eating the bread, he thew a rock at the duck, which hit it. He then jumped on the duck and rung its neck plucked it and put it in the patient fridge. I thought that was out of the norm so shared that with me wife. As a result he has been informed it is not ok to kill the local wild life.

I do share some of the highlights of my day with my family...no names of course! I love my job and at the same time need to 'get it out of my head'.

Wondering what your thoughts and experiences are...

My husband thinks I bring work home with me and doesn't want to hear about it (at all)...

I think I'm just talking about work (inpatient psych) and it happens to be pretty strange/stressful/tragic/dangerous/funny. Is my sense of humor getting really weird, is a story about a patient eloping and swimming across a pond for a cheeseburger not as funny as I think it is? Is it unreasonable to want to talk about my feelings/experience after a patient suicide?

Thanks to all who have posted in recent threads, it helps me to feel like it's ok to talk about work- without exposing my friends and family to it (although I am now not sure if posting here is bringing work home with me:uhoh3: !)

Things that become commonplace to us are completely shocking to other people...I can remember having a particularily taxing day at work and I was on the phone with my mother about to burst into tears saying "I want someone to tell me that their feces is radioactive...and for me to think that's weird!" In all actuality, I would never be able to go back to a "regular" hospital...I would be overcome with the monotony of "normalcy".

I honestly try to leave work at work but something generally happens that will bring up something that I have to share....My husband does not want to hear any of it (possible disorder here) so I do talk with my best friend.....some things have just GOT to be shared in this type of work !!!!!

Working in the psychiatric field, I tend to talk about the strange, funny, stressful and dangerous things as well if only to get it out of my mind and relieve stress while maintaining confidentiality of patient information. Because if you don't talk about it, you tend to keep it all in and get burned out. And sometimes, what I see as funny, I guess you just have to be there to get it. :roll

Thanks for all the replies, I'm working on finding a happy medium, it was too hard to not talk about work at all so I'm mostly focusing on cutting down.

Are there any threads about bizarre psych patient stories? Your patients can really feed the eels at your hospital kiwipsychnurse? Did your patient go so far as to show you his radioactive feces RN2begin? This is funny stuff!:chuckle

Thanks for all the replies, I'm working on finding a happy medium, it was too hard to not talk about work at all so I'm mostly focusing on cutting down.

Are there any threads about bizarre psych patient stories? Your patients can really feed the eels at your hospital kiwipsychnurse? Did your patient go so far as to show you his radioactive feces RN2begin? This is funny stuff!:chuckle

I work in the end of the service where people are about to be released. The only unit that is unlocked in the whole complex. Yep he can feed the eels.

Alright, so I am amazingly late replying to this post but I'm not sure I get the humor here. So...Green12, you think its funny when a patient has radioactive poop, and ducks are strangled?? You probably might even laugh at my patient who was the "King of the Buffalo's" (He did have a crown, sort of like Fred Flinstones). You would actually giggle at his outrage that we took him away from his kingdom?

:lol_hitti

My patient stumbled up the hall at 3am and asked me to pin his 15 sheets he had wrapped around him, as he was on his way to a toga party. I just pinned them and sent him back to his room....why take a party away from his delusions? Who am I to ruin his night? You might actually find this odd, or OMG funny??? You MUST be a new nurse, this is "a day in the life".

I don't bother with telling my tales to my husband, but it was kinda funny when my 7 year old said "So how is His Highness today?"

God I love crazy people! Both in the hospital, and my friends. How dull for those folks who work in an office or some such. No voices, no granduer, how boring!!!

:lol: