HEALTH OCCUPATION OF THE MONTH
Psychiatric Nursing
by Karen Koester
December 02, 2008
I am personally interested in Psychiatric Nursing. Psychiatric nursing is the specialty of nursing that cares for people of all ages with mental illness or mental distress. For example, they deal with people that have schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, psychosis, depression or dementia. On top of the nursing degree, psychiatric nurses receive additional training in psychological therapies, which makes them build a therapeutic alliance, and the administration of psychiatric medication.
There are two levels of psychiatric nursing. Those levels are basic and advanced. The basic level has the registered nurses working with families, groups, individuals, and even the community to assess mental health needs. They develop a diagnosis of the patient, and then they plan a nursing care, and then they make a conclusion of the patient by finally evaluating the nursing care. The advanced level of registered nursing has their master’s degree in psychiatric-mental health nursing. They are able to include the role of Clinical Nurse Specialist or Nurse Practitioner. On top of the basic level performance, they are able to assess, diagnose, and treat individuals for families with psychiatric problems and disorders or for the potential of disorders.
The characteristics of a psych nurse include having a relationship with their patients, being independent and being able to have a positive teamwork ethic with their peers. Since the main and basic point of being a psych nurse is trying to help people get better, or to make them confident mentally, or just helping them in any kind of way, that person needs to have people skills including communication and understanding, and most importantly they should include psychological and physical stamina. If they are unable to help themselves with their problems, or if they cannot stay mentally strong for themselves, how can they expect to help others? That is why it is important to be physically and mentally strong when going into a career like this one.
This career can have major drawbacks like any career can. The drawbacks can include dangerous clients, excessive paperwork, restrictive patient-care policies, conflict from misconceptions about mental illness, and also uncooperative or difficult patients too. Hopefully though, those drawbacks interest you and should be why someone would enter this field, because they would enjoy the challenge of everyday working criteria.
The education for this career includes a registered nurse (RN) with an associate’s degree (AD), or preferably a bachelor’s science of nursing degree (BSN). Also many go ahead and continue school and get their master’s degree (MSN). So overall, they attend school for four to six years. Psychiatric nurses usually are employed at hospitals, health departments, outpatient facilities, and long-term care centers.
The job outlook for this career is above average, so it is excellent to look into. Also, the combination of the rapid growth to replace the many workers who are going to leave the occupation each year is one of the main reasons it is above average.
