Nursing Reflection Paper

I have been a nurse at the University of Michigan hospital for eleven years. Currently, I work in the psychiatric emergency department. Our patients’ ages range from toddlers to adults. Some of the frequent diagnoses we see are: bipolar disorder, suicidality, psychosis, anxiety, schizophrenia, and obsessive compulsive disorder. These patients can be very challenging and often have complex medical comorbidities such as cancer, diabetes, cardiac problems, and other medical problems. My job is to triage our patients and make sure that they are medically suitable to speak to a social worker and then a psychologist. Often times, our patients have recently been through traumatic life events.
When a large majority of our patient population presents to our ED, they are in crisis. These crisis can be very challenging. Some examples of this during the recent months are; 1.) A Mother who found her son hanging (deceased) in the bathroom; 2.) An autistic child going through puberty who has started becoming aggressive and beating his Mother; 3.) A newly manic patient whose family is scared and unfamiliar with this diagnosis.
Along with the patient’s crisis, comes a dire need for education. When I first started this unit, nursing education (computer documented) was at a …show more content…
There are a couple of new projects that I am working on. One is doing a PowerPoint presentation on cultural competency in mental health. This is a presentation for staff on the differing views of patients and how different cultures view mental health. Another RN and myself are also working on a project to present to the local community. We would like to reach junior high and high school students with a presentation on drugs and mental health. We see a large amount of minors in PES. Often times, these kids are having issues with substance abuse. We would like to reach these kids in a preventative fashion before we see them