Mental Health Nursing: A Guide For New Nurses and Crabby Old Dirt-Bags

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(as of Sep 22, 2024 22:46:35 UTC – Details)

Me: So I read on the computer that you smoked some crack one day, and you were hearing a voice telling you to kill yourself…

Patient: So I tried.

Me: You swallowed a bunch of pills, and you were trying to kill yourself.

Patient: Yes.

Me: Um… But then you had enough sense to call an ambulance, right, and…

Patient: As soon as I took the pills I got scared.

Me: Yeah. OK. So then you ended up here, eh?

Patient: Yeah. Well, I was down on the medical floor for three days.

Me: Yeah, are you feeling any better since you’ve been in the hospital? Or not feeling better? How do you feel?

Patient: Very anxious and scared.

Me: Yeah?

Patient: I’m at the point where I don’t want to live but I’m too scared to die.

***

I thought being a mental health nurse would be a nice job — walk in happy, spread happiness, leave happy. Then I became a mental health nurse — walk in anxious, fight with patients, leave defeated.

It’s frustrating when patients don’t do what you want them to do — because what you want them to do — is get better. But conflicts can be rewarding too, like when you help your hopeless patient find hope — and they get better.

Before I started, I asked, “What do mental health nurses do all day?” I didn’t get it. Aren’t nurses usually changing dressings and starting IVs? I still wonder sometimes.

Patients often arrive at the hospital with the police or ambulance in a compromised state — suicidal, psychotic, manic, drunk, or bloodied (likely some combination). Patients are often eager to talk, so I just try to be quiet and write stuff down. It helps if I can be nonconfrontational and just take it all in. Heck, I don’t know, I think, “maybe his mother IS trying to poison him.”

Just know you have the power to change someone’s life.

You might not know what you’re doing, but if you care about your patients, you’ll figure a lot of stuff out. A new nurse who wants to help others will consistently outrun a veteran who merely shows up for the pay cheque.

Sometimes I would observe nurses with patients, and want to take over. “I could have handled that better,” I would think. I wanted more difficult patients to spare newer nurses the burden, and to avoid a massacre. I thought I could help a lot of nurses. So, I wrote some things down.

And thus, this is my guide to mental health nursing. It is not a textbook, nor is it a comprehensive guide. It is a few notes on mental health nursing compiled together. I don’t mean to present it as some golden standard. But I have strong opinions.

ASIN ‏ : ‎ B0CM15VK2Z
Publisher ‏ : ‎ Wherewithal Books (October 27, 2023)
Publication date ‏ : ‎ October 27, 2023
Language ‏ : ‎ English
File size ‏ : ‎ 375 KB
Simultaneous device usage ‏ : ‎ Unlimited
Text-to-Speech ‏ : ‎ Enabled
Screen Reader ‏ : ‎ Supported
Enhanced typesetting ‏ : ‎ Enabled
X-Ray ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Word Wise ‏ : ‎ Not Enabled
Sticky notes ‏ : ‎ On Kindle Scribe
Print length ‏ : ‎ 240 pages